For more than a thousand years pilgrims in China left marks of their passing in the Mogao Caves, or Caves of a Thousand Buddhas. Their carvings, paintings and murals speak with a devotion that transcends time, and forms the inspiration for a remarkable new musical work from one of the world’s most exciting composers and conductors.

From an Academy Award-winning score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to radically experimental works composed for such organic materials as water, paper and wind, Tan Dun has again and again been proven as one of the truly compelling musical forces of this era.

Dun’s efforts have accrued an astonishing array of accolades—Grammy, Grawemeyer and Shostakovich Awards, Bach Prize and a recent Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement—yet his creative spirit is a restless one, always searching for new expression.

Here Tan Dun has dreamed the world’s first passion set to the teachings of the Buddha. Two years of researching the Magao Caves—the world’s most impressive repository of Buddhist art—have been transformed into a monumental work sung in Chinese and Sanskrit, an opera in six acts that tells of love, forgiveness, sacrifice and salvation.