Secret of a Dream is a collaborative project between Smee Wong and Angela Sebastian, a modern dance professor at Western Washington University.

This dramatic piece is especially intense in Movements III and VI. The original movement titles are in Chinese, using rare characters deliberately chosen to evoke a sense of isolation. The overall mood is melancholic—if this is a dream, it is intended to be a nightmare. Influenced by Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 5, Smee Wong aimed to steer away from the conventions of contemporary atonal music. Instead, the piece occasionally echoes the textures of Baroque music and the patterns of minimalism.

Purchase the score