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[28th Orchestral Season]
Press Release (2 pages)
September 1, 2004
A phantasmagoria of sound images that surfs cultural dimensions
Yan Huichang and Wang Yong in
Dimensional Pursuits
at the New Vision Arts Festival
Wang Yong, of guzheng and rock¡¦n roll fame who hails from Beijing, will bring his ensemble to Hong Kong and join the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra in a series of concerts that opens up a new vision in Chinese music composition. A brainchild between Wang and Yan Huichang, it will be a concert with an attitude, when the traditional meets pop and rock, with a lot of improvisation in between. The concert series Yan Huichang and Wang Yong in Dimensional Pursuits at the New Vision Arts Festival will be held on November 11 and 12, 2004 at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall.
Wang Yong is a phenomenon, born out of the wedlock of China¡¦s coup in economic open reform and the incessant expansion of the Post-Modern music culture of the West. He has emerged as an anomaly: he is a lecturer in Composition in a music conservatory, guzheng recitalist, consultant for MIDI hi-tech music, rock musician, keyboard player, singer, composer and band leader all in one. He and his twelve-piece ensemble, Wang Yong Group, have given the world of modern music in China an adrenaline shot in the arm and transforming the music stage with passion and rigour that have never been seen before. The revamping process is shocking but irreversible, and the results are already emerging.
Wang Yong Group is a cross-cultural music combo. Apart from Wang himself, there are singers of the Uighur and Mongolian ethnicity. The instruments also represent the cross-cultural form, and include guzheng, matouqin (the horse-headed lute called morin kuur in Mongolian), guitar, set of drums, percussion, keyboard, bass etc. There are two professional sound technicians in the group as well. On the occasion of the New Vision Arts Festival, Wang and his one-of-a-kind ensemble will be joining the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, under the baton of Yan Huichang, in a dramatic, colourful music experience. The audience will be transposed to new dimensions of the so-called Chinese music, where traditions, pop music, improvisation, rock and Chinese histrionics merge into one.
The 21st Century is an age of information exchange, and one that is growing at awesome speed and quantity. The same quantum leap is happening in the music world. With the help of MIDI, cultural barriers of ethnic music will be broken down. It is foreseeable that the ethnic musical instruments will soon partner with western ¡¥classical¡¦ instruments to create a new breed of cross-cultural music. This is a trend that is already emerging. We cannot turn back the clock. And Wang Yong and Yan Huichang will stand testimony to this in the concert called Dimensional Pursuits. Watch them in action as a full-scale Chinese orchestra is coupled with digital and electronic sounds to launch you into a brave new world in music.
Dimensional Pursuits is a production in which the real is interwoven with the surreal. With powerful musical elements which greatly enhance the show¡¦s appeal, the audience will be transported to eight dreamscapes, each with a different scene. The eight pieces of programme music are entitled as follows: The Singing Wolf/ The Bamboo and the Pine/ Let Me Fly/ On the Himalayas. 1. At a Buddhist gathering of worship. 2. Songs and dance. 3. Sukhavati ¡V the Pure Land/ The Future Life/The Desert War/ The Ruins on the Gobi Desert. 1. Praying. 2. Xinjiang rhythms. There is an internal coherence that is highly illusory, and to this is added the unbridled talents of Wang Yong, whose music and ideas are superlatively creative. These are to be executed through the rich orchestration of Yan Huichang, whose command over the expressiveness of a full-sized Chinese orchestra is comprehensive and assured. This concert will certainly be an entirely new musical experience for the audience.
Tickets for Yan Huichang and Wang Yong in Dimensional Pursuits at the New Vision Arts Festival are available at all URBTIX Outlets at $250, 200, 150, 100. Half-price tickets are offered for senior citizens, people with disabilities and full-time students. Friends of HKCO and HKCC can enjoy a 25% and a 10% ticket discount respectively. Enquiries: 3185 1600; Booking Hotline: 2734 9009. Internet Booking: www.urbtix.gov.hk. HKCO website: www.hkco.org
¢w End ¢w
Press Enquiry¡G Ms.Vivian Ip (Public Relation & Publicity Executive)
Tel ¡G3185 1601 / 9553 2244 Fax¡G2815 5615
E-mail¡Gvivianip@hkco.org HKCO Website¡Gwww.hkco.org
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Artists Biography
Yan Huichang Conductor
National Class One Conductor. As a conductor who has worked with all professional Chinese orchestras in Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, Yan has won the acclaim of the music circles in China and abroad for his artistic and conducting talents. Under his baton, and in collaboration with the famous composer Zhao Jiping, the Symphony Orchestra section of the China National Symphony Orchestra made the soundtrack recordings for such award-winning films as Raise the Red Lantern, Ballad of the Yellow River, and Five Girls and a Rope. Yan was awarded the ¡§Cultural Medallion (Music)¡¨ by the National Arts Council of Singapore in September 2001. Since 2004, he has been a Visiting Professor in many music conservatories. Yan was awarded a Bronze Bauhinia Star (BBS) by the Chief Executive of HKSAR in 2004 in recognition of his remarkable achievements in Chinese music as well as his efforts in promoting Chinese music.
Wang Yong
Wang Yong is an eponym, a one-of-a-kind artist that surfs different genres of music. He plays the guzheng, rock, and cross-over. He jams, and he composes. In his music career that spans more than thirty years, he has learned the various schools of guzheng music playing, just like so many of the virtuosi playing this Chinese zither. Yet he also belonged to the first generation of rock musicians in China, and he is still as active as ever on stage. He has jammed with many great names on the international scene using his guzheng. He is a grandee in cross-over music in China. He has created a unique music-scape where he puts all he has learned about music and then explodes it to a mesmerized audience to launch them into a magical space of sounds.
In his leading role, Wang takes it upon himself to write all the music, lyrics and arrangements for his group. He has given new meaning to the brand new form of music, the cross-over. You will find in his music occasionally the tranquility of Chinese landscape paintings, an element often associated with Chinese traditional music, or the exotic rich colours of Chinese ethnic music, the severity of western classical music, and the hip-hop sounds of today. He can be avant garde in his experimental music and electronic music, or freewheeling in his improvisations. He has created a soundscape of dreams that can organically integrate music of various forms: east-west, then-and-now, small to big, and cosmos to earth, where the traditional and the ethnic music of China are merged with symphonies in western music, pop of the day, experimental music, electronic music etc., etc., ¡K¡K.
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