Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA’s New Album Is a Ballet Score With Colorado Symphony Orchestra

RZA is back with a new album—a recording of the score to A Ballet Through Mud, which the Wu-Tang Clan alumnus wrote and composed for performance in 2023 at Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver, Colorado. Performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Christopher Dragon, the score includes spoken word and orchestration that RZA says was inspired by revisiting his childhood notebooks. The recorded version will stream, via Platoon, from August 30.

RZA said in a press release:

I have been composing my whole life, although I didn’t know initially that was what I was doing. The inspiration for ‘A Ballet Through Mud’ comes from my earliest creative output as a teenager, but its themes are universal—love, exploration, and adventure. I hope people use it to score their own lives, to transform a drive to the grocery store or sharing a meal with loved ones into something magical, to be inspired and let their imaginations take them into a different chamber, if only for a moment.

A Ballet Through Mud:

01 Aeolian Beauty
02 Clear Sky After Storm
03 Ballet Through Mud
05 Divine Intervention
06 Freedom of Movement
07 Soft Footsteps
08 Goodnight
09 The Night Dances When You Least Expect It
10 Moving Meditation
11 The Lotus Arrives