The nature of the Chinese-born Montrealer’s music being what it is, that is to say, more contemporary writing than purely improvised jazz, the thematic, harmonic and even melodic skeleton changes little, even if autonomous spaces are left here and there. A thoughtful blend of some improvisation, lots of contemporary writing, traditional Chinese song and learned references to Ligeti, Pauline Oliveros or Meredith Monk, and even Evans and Strayhorn, make Subduing the Silence an impressive first opus for an artist in her early twenties. The potential for development is immense, and we might even sense that the young singer-songwriter could be a kind of Chinese answer to Korea’s Youn Sun-Nah and Japan’s Hiromi (in terms of eclectic avant-garde, even post-modernism). Time will tell. Now that her studies at McGill are over, Ruiqi has begun training in composition at the Berne Academy of the Arts in Switzerland. There’s no doubt that she’ll be back with even more explosive and accomplished material before long. And, of course, we hope she’ll be back here to share her new ideas with us.
