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Press Release
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Yan
Huichang and Wang Yong in Dimensional Pursuits - New Vision
Arts Festival
New Vision Arts Festival
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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. |
A heart pure as a
clear spring. A mind totally intent. Resounding lutes. Clamouring bells and
drums. Put the heart in a solo. Use the mind in an accompaniment.
The harmony of yin and yang. The luminosity of the sun and the moon. A pursuit
that spans the east and the west. A quest that roams the heavens and the earth.
Keep the sounds in a designated realm, but let the meaning fill up the
firmament.
Paint a picture of beauty from the heart for the world to see, incorporating all
that we comprehend, that we see, that we are going after and that we dream.
In bringing together a multitude of musical forms on one stage,
we – myself and the members of the Wang Yong Ensemble – are laying out
our understanding and thinking of Chinese music since the dawning of Open
Reform,
our musical impulses, our musical passions,
and our conception of the chemistry between Chinese culture and the foreign
cultures that flooded China since the Open Reform.
We shall use our passions, our strengths and our ways to unfold to you our
dreams about music.
“Raise your head, let the moon touch you with her light, then close your eyes,
and feel her care.”
Wang Yong
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.
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My choice：
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For the first half of the Orchestral Season, I would really look forward to
the November concert Dimensional Pursuits, which is part of the New Vision
Arts Festival. The creative combination of the HKCO and Wang Yong’s ensemble
would be a refreshing and novel experience for our musical thinking and our
ears.
Chow Fan Fu, an established arts critic
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Highlights of the
Programme
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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 – 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.
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Know your music
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The revolution in
musical composition brought about by the computer
With
rapid and intense developments in electronic technology, the newest
electronic synthesizer is now capable, through more refined and accurate
‘sampling’ processes, of producing sounds that are almost
indistinguishable from those produced on actual instruments. On the other
hand, there are also tremendous developments in MIDI (Musical Instrument
Digital Interface) which considerably broadens the scope of sounds
available to the composer. Through the interaction of the synthesizer,
MIDI, actual instruments and human voices, the musical world is forever
expanding, and with electronic technology continuing to grow, it can well
be foreseen that this expansion would go on in the 21st
Century.
Nowadays
the new computer software makes it possible for a piece of vocal music or
a melody played on an instrument to be recorded as notes on staves. And
musical notations may be played as if by an instrument of choice, or as
sung by a human voice. The operator may key in commands to add or change
the voices, the harmony, the key, and the rhythm. The various voices may
undergo many trial runs on different instruments to achieve the desired
harmonic effect. Even when a musician is trying to compose something as
complicated as a symphony, he is now able to listen instantly to the
realization, or near-realisation, of his work. In a way the composition
of music now becomes “easier” than in any previous age. Under such
circumstances, a composer will have to develop his own uniqueness in order
to survive. On the other hand, with the assistance of the computer,
modern composers will grow keener in exploring and breaking new grounds in
music than their predecessors.
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Dream One: The Singing Wolf
The west wind. The faint moon. A stretch of desert sand. The dried up
riverbed. Amidst them comes the singing wolf, an old friend of the
History of Time.
Dream Two: The Bamboo and the Pine
These are symbols of integrity, a quality
that is in the blood of the Chinese people on the Central Plains.
Dream Three: Let Me Fly
Spread your wings of your dreams – fly high
and free.
Dream Four: On the Himalayas
At a Buddhist gathering of worship. Songs and dance. Sukhavati – the
Pure Land.
The
slope of Mount Sumeru is dotted with monks in yellow caps and red robes,
against a blue sky and white clouds. The Tibetan girls sing in praise of
heaven. The pilgrims prostrate on the ground and stretch out in fervent
prayer.
Dream Five: The Call from the Moon
There are calls of invitation to come along. In an age-old ritual in
praise of living.
Dream Six: The Future Life
Having a heart and a mind that is free is
the greatest happiness of all.
Dream Seven: The Desert War
Struggling, fighting, all are but elusive moments in time. Now you see
them. Now you don't.
Dream Eight: The Ruins on the Gobi Desert
1. Praying. 2. Xinjiang rhythms.
Feel the vibrant days of peace in the past through the quiet desolation of
the Gobi today.
Programme
duration is about 1 hour and 30 minutes without intermission.
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| Date:
11 -12.11. 2004
Time: 8:00 pm |
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Venue:
Hong Kong Cultural Centre
Concert Hall |
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$250, 200,
150, 100 |
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Yan Huichang
Conductor |
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Yan Huichang was
conferred the title of National Class One Conductor at the First
Professional Appraisal of China in 1987. He was appointed Music
Director of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra in June 1997 and was
re-titled Artistic Director and Principal Conductor in October
2003. as a conductor, he has worked with all professional
Chinese orchestras in Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, Singapore and
Hong Kong. In collaboration with renowned directors Zhang Yimou,
Teng Wenji, the famous composer Zhao Jiping and the Symphony
Orchestra section of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra of
China, Yan had made soundtrack recordings for such award winning
films as Raise the Red Lantern, Ballad of Yellow River, and Five
Girls and a Rope.
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Yan is actively
engaged in composition. His representative works include the
symphonic poem The Sound of Water which won a Class One Prize in
the Composition Contest of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music
and Class Two Prize in the Third National Music Composition
Competition; and the pipa solo work Nostalgia which won a Class
One Award at the First National Pipa Contest of Contributing
Works. Yan was awarded the "Cultural Medallion (Music)" by the
National Arts Council of Singapore in September 2001.
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Wang Yong
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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.
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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.,.
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Wang Yong Group
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The members of the Wang Yong Group come from
various backgrounds. Some are formally trained musicians from the top
institutions in China, the China Conservatory of Music and the Central
Conservatory of Music. Some are the top names in China’s pop world, and
others, music-makers of different nationalities who are virtuosi in their own
right. The Group is their platform for the big musical interface, where the
traditional meets with the pops, the classical with the trendy, the ethnic
with the world, and discords turn into harmony.
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