Patrick Yim has built something rare and beautiful. The violinist and violist will release ‘Bamboo Grove’ on PENTATONE on August 21, 2026, an album of world premiere recordings made in close collaboration with Chen Yi and Zhou Long, two of the most distinguished composers working at the meeting point of Chinese and Western musical traditions. It’s a luminous, ambitious project that opens up an entirely new sound world for Western strings.
Recorded during a week-long residency at the University of Notre Dame in April 2024, the album gathers four works that reimagine the expressive range of the violin and viola through the textures of Chinese musical culture. The collaboration runs deep, shaped by the composers’ own histories spanning the Cultural Revolution, studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and artistic refinement in New York at Columbia University with mentors Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky. Across the record, Yim evokes the guqin, erhu, pipa, xiao, lusheng, ancient bell ensembles, Peking opera percussion, and regional folk traditions.
Yim speaks warmly about the partnership at the album’s heart. “I have long admired the work and personal histories of Chen Yi and Zhou Long, and it has been a profound privilege to collaborate with them on this recording and to come to know them personally,” he said. “Their stories of collaborations with artists such as Yehudi Menuhin and Yo-Yo Ma offered a living connection to a remarkable musical lineage. From a performer’s perspective, these works are both idiomatic and imaginative, pushing the limits of Western instruments through a deep familiarity with their traditions and a rich creative vision. It is an honor to bring this music to life and share it with a wider audience.”
The program is full of discovery. It opens with Zhou Long’s ‘Bamboo Grove’ for unaccompanied violin, a 2024 work commissioned for Yim and premiered at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, inspired by Ruan Xian of the famed Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Chen Yi’s ‘Xian Shi’, heard in its trio version for viola, percussion, and piano, was her earliest orchestral composition and the first viola concerto by a Chinese composer, featuring a striking four-finger rapid pizzicato roll that’s unprecedented in the viola repertoire. Zhou Long’s ‘Tales from the Nine Bells’ draws on a millennia-old legend from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, while Chen Yi’s ‘Suite for Viola and Chamber Winds’ closes the album by evoking the lusheng, ancient set bells, the hsiao and ch’in, and a brilliant Chinese percussion ensemble.
The lead single, the fourth movement of the Suite, “Flower Drums in Dance,” arrives July 31 ahead of the full release. Yim is joined throughout by a deep bench of collaborators, including percussionist Paul Vaillancourt, pianist Shuai Wang, violist Kirsten Docter, clarinetist John Diodati, and the chamber winds led by conductor Paul Hostetter, with Jesse Lewis producing.
Honolulu-born and praised by The Strad for his deeply expressive, finely nuanced playing, Yim has performed at Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, Seoul Arts Center, Teatro alla Scala, and the Musikverein. A committed advocate for contemporary music, he has commissioned 70 works, many pairing violin with non-Western instruments, and collaborated with composers including Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Ken Ueno, and Bun-Ching Lam. He serves as Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Notre Dame.
‘Bamboo Grove’ Track Listing:
- Zhou Long – Bamboo Grove for Unaccompanied Violin (2024)
- Chen Yi – Xian Shi for Viola, Percussion, and Piano (1982)
- Zhou Long – Tales from the Nine Bells for Clarinet, Violin, Viola, and Piano (2013)
- Chen Yi – Suite for Viola and Chamber Winds: I. Lusheng Ensemble
- Chen Yi – Suite for Viola and Chamber Winds: II. Echoes of the Set Bells
- Chen Yi – Suite for Viola and Chamber Winds: III. Romance of Hsiao and Ch’in
- Chen Yi – Suite for Viola and Chamber Winds: IV. Flower Drums in Dance