Tianji Xie came to the U.S. in 1988 as a visiting scholar from China, where he was an authority on the folk music of China’s ethnic minorities and a master erhu performer. He began his study of the erhu when he was six years old with a blind fortune-teller on the streets of Shanghai and went on to become a soloist with the Shanghai Opera, a modern composer and a musicology authority with the Academy of Arts and Literature in Beijing. Xie immigrated to Canada in 1991 and is currently a composer and piano teacher in Vancouver, B.C.

The melodic material and arrangement was developed by Colangelo, but they are the product of group improvisation and reflect the personality of the individual players, like the Brazilian guitarist Carlos Roberto.