Beijing, or as they used to call it, "Peking", has long been the home of traditional Chinese art and musical forms. As a child, from the sound of the Beijing dialect to the masters of Chinese standup comedy, from centuries-old architecture to Beijing Opera, everything fascinated me about this old town, and the many customs and traditional practices there. This orchestral overture is my homage to old Beijing and its traditional musical forms. ​

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Many quotations are heard throughout the piece. The opening bassoon passage is my transcription of the chanting of vendors who sharpen knives and scissors. In old China, vendors commonly turned their shouts announcing their goods into little melodies, often based on the tones of the words, while they roamed the streets. Right before the end of the work, the celli and double basses play a little jingle in pizzicato, which is a common hook heard in the three-stringed traditional instrument "san-xian".

Notably, the entire slow, romantic section comes from a traditional "Taiping Geci" song called "Yan Qing Shui He". The melody appears three times in total, each time in crescendo in texture and orchestration.

In such a predominantly traditional Chinese context, it was central to my concerns to tastefully unify Chinese and Western elements, and responsibly bring the traditional sounds from the streets of old Beijing into the modern concert hall. A major technique I explored in this work is the shift of tonal pitch materials by a semitonee, so that two tonal centers off set by a semitone are juxtaposed in the same melody or phrase. This can be heard throughout the piece. ​​​​