Kui Dong (董葵, born 1966, Beijing, China) is a Chinese-American composer, musician, and teacher.
[1] She has released two albums on the Other Minds record label: Hands Like Waves Unfold (2008) and Since When Has the Bright Moon Existed?
After being told at the age of 15 by a teacher that she would never become a successful pianist or conductor because of her physical stature, Dong applied to the composers program at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.
She was too young to be accepted and was sent to the high school program affiliated with the conservatory to study composition and theory rather than performance.
Every summer, the school also gave composition students a small amount of money to collect folk songs in remote villages.
Most of her pieces of this time use heterophonic imitation rather than western counterpoint, are inspired by folk songs or tales, or are written for traditional Chinese instruments.
The percussion also evokes the natural world with use of woodblock, Chinese bass drum, and Tibetan singing bowl.
After that conversation, Dong began questioning her identity as a composer and why she felt the need to make her music recognizably Chinese.
In this piece, the jarring juxtaposition between rock 'n roll slap bass guitar and a well-known Beijing opera character is in no way subtle.
In 1999 Dong began to improvise with Christian Wolff and Larry Polansky, and they formed an ensemble called Trio.
This would add another element to her compositions that we see in her work Earth, Water, Wood, Metal, Fire (2001), which were based on Dong's piano improvisations.
The prepared piano[5] shows influences of John Cage, the clusters of dissonant chords are suggestive of Henry Cowell, and repeated, stagnantly moving sections could be described stylistically as minimalist music.
However, there are also fragmentary moments of pentatonic melodies as well as heterophonic passages which create the flavor of Chinese music, but in a more subtle manner than previous works.
[6] In 2004, Dong wrote the piece Ludamus Denuo, which she still considers part of her "Fusion" period, but is moving in a new direction.
[citation needed] One of Dong's latest pieces, entitled The Seasons or Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, also is from her "fusion period".