Local child's composition the toast of Lincoln Center

The New York Philharmonic premiered a composition by 13-year-old Shanghai native Wendy Wen at Lincoln Center on Saturday.

The one-hour "Young People's Concerts – Youth as Creator" featured compositions written by participants in the Very Young Composers Program from China, Finland, Israel and the United States, including Wen's "Lady Liberty in a Thunderstorm."

The concert was originally scheduled to take place in 2020 to mark the 25th anniversary of the symphony's Very Young Composer's Program – and Wen was commissioned to compose a new piece to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the US Constitution's 19th Amendment legalizing women's suffrage – but was delayed due to the pandemic.

The education program was founded by the philharmonic in 1995 to celebrate the power of children's imaginations and showcase their ideas. The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra joined in 2016 and organized the first young composers workshop in the city that summer. It has since selected ten young composers for the workshop every summer.

Wen joined in 2019 shortly after she started learning how to compose music.

"Joining the program really increased my interest in composing and has made a huge impact on my musical career. Mentors used games to help us understand how to compose from a unique perspective, and I realized how fun and vivid it could be," she said. "I still remember how the mentors asked us to team up in groups of three and spontaneously compose to the theme of melting ice. I was quite worried because I didn't have my violin with me, but then I saw a bottle of water. It just came to me that we could make melting ice sounds with the bottled water."

The piece was subsequently premiered at the symphony's annual Music in the Summer Air festival.

Wen, who is currently studying in Kansas City, started playing piano at age four and violin at age 6.