Julia Glenn’s ‘Ink Traces’ Is a Product of 15 Years of Research

By Miranda Wilson | From the January/February 2025 issue of Strings

Cross-cultural fusions in classical music have become a familiar part of the recorded landscape. Julia Glenn’s new album, Ink Traces, is a product of 15 years of research into Chinese poetry, dancing, calligraphy, painting, and music. The album demonstrates Glenn’s artistry as a violinist and commitment to performing new music by Chinese and Chinese American composers including Chen Yi, Yao Chen, Sang Tong, Pan Kai, Gao Weijie, Chen Gang, Ma Sicong, and Chen Yihan.

Some of the featured compositions explicitly evoke traditional Chinese musical styles, including the Romance and Dance by Chen Yi that opens the album. Here, the composer uses pentatonicism and extended violin techniques to imitate the harmonies and instruments of traditional Chinese music. Others, such as Yao Chen’s Air for solo violin, seem more concerned with exploring the capabilities of the violin—natural harmonics, artificial harmonics, and double-stops. Another, Sang Tong’s Night Scenery, seems to owe more to the influence of Shostakovich and Berg than to that of other Chinese composers. The album’s title work, Ink Traces of Sigh by Pan Kai, demonstrates Glenn’s control of post-diatonic idioms. Here, the composer calls variously for wide oscillations of vibrato, dissonant leaps, and varied bow pressures, suggesting the sound of Chinese stringed instruments. Drum and Song by Chen Gang features largely pentatonic harmonic patterns and timbres that vary from slow lyricism to dense, rhythmically impulsive polyphony. 

The last track on the album, Chen Yihan’s EHOHE, is a departure from the “quieter” styles of several of the other tracks. Scored for Baroque violin and electronics, it combines frantic drum-like ostinato patterns and eerie synthesizer drones alongside a violin part rich in virtuoso extended techniques. It would be exciting to hear more from this young composer, a current graduate student at Princeton University.

In general, the composers on the album present styles that push effectively against European/American musical conventions. Throughout, Glenn and Valianatos’ playing shows transcendent facility and resonance. Further, Glenn’s passion for Chinese contemporary music is backed up by impressive academic credentials in the subject. The overall effect is a thoughtfully performed exploration of Chinese new music. As a contribution to the growing body of compositions representing more than one culture, this album will spark important conversations in the world of new music.