China's leading contemporary composer is seeking not just an amalgam of Western and Asian forms and sounds. This music is the future. It does not fit the 20th century, but opens the door to the 21st.
Westerners are bored with their music.
Tan's own success in the West and Asia underpins his prediction for music's future direction. So does the excitement stirred by modern Asian works which he has conducted at leading venues, from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam to New York's Lincoln Center and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. He cites young composers like Hosokaba Toshio from Japan and Korea's Go Wing Jin. In 1994 the BBC listed a CD of his orchestral work On Taoism as one of the best. Last year Tan's opera Marco Polo, jointly commissioned by arts festivals in Munich and Edinburgh, was named Opera of the Year in Germany.