The release by Naxos of Huang Ruo’s Chamber Concertos Nos. 1–4 (8.559322) was hailed as ‘a bold debut’ (Gramophone) which ‘shows a major compositional voice emerging’ (The Juilliard Journal Online). This disc, also conducted by the composer, presents three of his Drama Theaters for various combinations of Eastern and Western instruments—including 18 beer bottles—the elusive subtitle of each strikingly suggesting a musical/cultural/philosophical idea. Similarly, The Three Tenses explores a paradoxically integrated notion of time, where past, present and future create ‘a seamless entity called timelessness’. Huang Ruo won the 2008 International Composition Prize of the Luxembourg Society for Contemporary Music and has been cited by the New Yorker as ‘one of the most intriguing of the new crop of Asian-American composers.’