By any standard, Frost School of Music keyboard performance graduate Hongxi Li’s April 9 Doctoral Capstone Recital was a monumental undertaking. The ambitious concert, “Bridging East and West: An Immersive Journey Through The Piano Works of Chen Yi”, was funded by a prestigious $10,000 Presser Graduate Music Award, and Li put the money to good use. She crafted an innovative multimedia experience that went far beyond a typical recital, with visual and lighting effects, interview segments, and interactive elements, and used the playback technology of the Steinway Spirio | r, the world’s most advanced player piano, to duet with herself onstage. She even marketed the show.
“Hongxi has always been someone who could walk that extra mile,” said associate professor Naoko Takao, Li’s studio teacher and head of the Frost School’s Keyboard Performance department. “But this was an extremely ambitious project. I was just so proud to be her teacher. I saw how much effort she put into it, and with such independence and tenacity.”
Born in China’s Jilin Province, Li is of Joseonjok descent, a minority group in China with Korean roots. She grew up with a mix of both cultures and languages, a dichotomy she likens to Spanish-speaking communities in Miami. Her artistic mindset is to weave different threads together, which made the music of Chinese-American artist Chen Yi (a 2024 Frost School composer-in-residence) a perfect fit.
“After the performance, Chen Yi told me she was deeply moved and inspired,” said Li. “That meant more to me than I can easily put into words. Her music feels so personal to me, the way she weaves together Western compositional techniques with Chinese folk materials. Coordinating all the multimedia and immersive elements made it a genuinely new experience, and a challenge on every level.”
The recital drew around 150 listeners to Newman Recital Hall, many of whom came from outside the Coral Gables campus. The crowd response was very positive, with Frost School Associate Dean of Graduate Studies Shannon de l’Etoile among those congratulating Li afterward.
“It was overwhelming in the best way,” said Li. “This felt like one step closer to a dream I’ve carried for a long time, to weave together different artistic elements. That vision finally moved from something living only in my imagination into something real. It was a project that asked far more of me than a typical recital. I was carrying both roles, as performer and curator.”
Logistical constraints prevented the realization of several of the show’s more ambitious aspects, such as incorporating a dancer into the performance. But having earned her doctorate, Li plans to continue developing “Bridging East and West” with additional elements. It's an ongoing project she describes as “very much alive.”
“I see this concert as a beginning rather than a conclusion,” Li said. “I want to do it again and do it better, with ideas I’ve not yet fully realized. My plan is to add what didn’t make it this time and eventually take it on the road. I’ve always been drawn to interdisciplinary, multimedia stage productions, and I hope to keep building in that direction. What I want to pursue is not novelty for its own sake, but depth – new ways of helping people enter music more fully, and new ways of creating performances that feel immersive, emotionally resonant, and genuinely shared.”
