the longest and most energetic not because of the element fire's importance in mythology, but because compositionally its length allowed previous themes to return and bring the work to a close. The prepared piano shows influences of John Cage, the clusters of dissonant chords are suggestive of Henry Cowell, and repeated, stagnantly moving sections could be described stylistically as minimalist music. However, there are also fragmentary moments of pentatonic melodies as well as heterophonic passages which create the flavor of Chinese music, but in a more subtle manner than previous works. In these pieces, after being in the US for ten years, Dong finally seems to be able to amalgamate the influences that she has been exposed to and bring them together in a balanced way. Another piece that Dong considers part of this "Fusion" period is Shui Diao Ge To & Song. The texts for this work were the 11th century poem Shui Diao Ge by Su Shi and a contemporary poem, Song, by a friend of the composer named Denise Newman. Dong felt that these two texts balanced each other within the composition, and that her work would not be complete without one or the other. Written for mixed chorus and percussion, the piece was commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers but was deemed too difficult to perform by their conductor and was eventually premiered by Volti (then known as the San Francisco Chamber Singers) in 2003. Dong views this piece as a "cultural amalgam of all her life's experiences". In 2004, Dong wrote the piece Ludamus Denuo, which she still considers part of her "Fusion" period, but is moving in a new direction. The text of the piece is a 20th-century English poem written for children, which Dong has translated into medieval Latin and set for children's choir. Here, Dong is attempting to create a sense of timelessness and stylistic anonymity in the piece. At certain sections the piece is motet-like and at other instances evokes more of a twentieth-century harmony. When it was suggested to Dong that the piece did not sound stylistically "Chinese", she replied by saying that she is Chinese herself and asked how anything written by herself could possibly not be Chinese. Cultural influences Although Chinese music and Western art music are strong influences, her iTunes listening spans everything from classical Indian music, to Rachmaninoff, to James Blunt (popular for his song "You’re