When: Friday, March 19, 2026
Artist Q&A: 6 p.m. (premium ticket holders)
Doors: 7 p.m.
Performance: 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St., Denver, Colo. 80211
Tickets: $27.27 students; $37.66 general admission; $53.24 premium; free to youth 18 and younger
Creative Music Works proudly presents Min Xiao-Fen: White Lotus with Rez Abbasi, a live original score to The Goddess (1934) at the Bug Theatre on Friday, March 19th featuring Ms. Min on pipa, guqin, sanxian, ruan, and voice, with Abbasi on guitar.
Few artists have done more to both honor and reinvent the 2000-year history of the pipa than soloist, vocalist and composer Ms. Min. Classically trained in her native China, she served as a principal pipa soloist at Nanjing Traditional Music Orchestra and was an in-demand interpreter of traditional music before relocating to the United States and forging a new path for her instrument alongside many of the leading lights in modern jazz, free improvisation, experimental and contemporary classical music.
Ms. Min’s expressive, uncategorizable voice has found her collaborating with such inventive luminaries as Wadada Leo Smith, Derek Bailey, Randy Weston, John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Carl Stone and Björk.
Her project From Harlem to Shanghai and Back led Ms. Min to research the 1930s Shanghai arts, rediscovering the classic 1934 silent film The Goddess, directed by Wu Yonggang.
In one of the most powerful silent performances of all time, the legendary actress Ruan Lingyu plays the role of a young prostitute working to raise her child and send him through school. The Goddess was dismissed as decadent by Chinese scholars during the Cultural Revolution and remains hidden today.
Ms. Min created this score to bring The Goddess back to life for contemporary audiences.
Guitarist Rez Abbasi was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021 for composition, voted #1 Rising-Star Guitarist in the 2013 DownBeat Critics Poll and subsequently placed in the top-ten guitarists alongside luminaries Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, guitarist and composer. He is one of the most original voices on the current scene.
Ms. Min’s ancient Chinese instruments in dialogue with Abbasi’s guitar transform The Goddess into an innovative, soulful work for today.
White Lotus (The Goddess) has been performed at the Scottish rite Masonic Museum (2024), Blue Hill Concert Associations (2024), Lincoln Center (2023), Third Angle New Music (2023), Norton Museum of Art (2023), University of Chicago (2022), Chamber Music International (2022), Colgate University ((2022), the Orange Peel (2021), The Museum of Modern Art, NYC (2021), Cornell University (2021), University of Pittsburgh (2018), Hamilton College (2019), ArtYard (2018) and Roulette (2018).