China Daily (Hong Kong)

Cloud River Mountain

Cloud River Mountain, a collaborat­ive work by four Western composers, is based on Chinese myths and legends and features the expressive voice of Chinese folk singer Gong Linna. reports.

- Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn Chen Nan

Folk singer Gong Linna sings tale of Chinese lore to the West

One day in 2011, while on a tour of China with four other internatio­nal composers, the American composer Michael Gordon walked into a small music store filled with television­s, all playing different music videos. One in particular caught his attention. It was Gong Linna, a Chinese folk singer known for her expressive voice.

“I had never seen or heard anything like Gong Linna and I was deeply impressed by her performanc­e artistry,” recalls Gordon, who, through hand signals, asked the store owner to write down the name of the artist.

A few days later, Gordon attended a symposium on contempora­ry Chinese music, and one of the speakers was the German composer Robert Zollitsch, Gong’s husband.

Gordon and Zollitsch kept in touch and decided to explore the possibilit­ies of cooperatio­n.

Along with fellow composers, Julia Wolfe — his wife— and David Lang, Gordon is the co-founder of Bang on a Can, a New York-based musical organizati­on, which is known for projects such as the annual music festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, and the ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Gordon and Zollitsch collaborat­ed on a 30-minute set of songs that premiered at the 2015 Bang on a Can Marathon.

This was later expanded into a 70-minute concert, titled Cloud River Mountain, which was performed at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College on July 14 and 15 this year, as part of the annual Lincoln Center Festival, which has been held since 1966.

At the concert, Gong performed 11 songs, with lyrics in both Mandarin and English, composed by Zollitsch, Gordon, Wolfe and Lang.

The four composers also collaborat­ed on an instrument­al piece. The music and lyrics were inspired by ancient Chinese poetry and myths, which was an idea initiated by Zollitsch.

“We did rehearsals from 10 am to 5 pm for about a week. With the diverse background­s of each composer, we had an amazing experience of cross-cultural musical communicat­ion,” says Gong.

Born in Guiyang, the capital of Southwest China’s Guizhou province, Gong started learning Chinese folk singing at a very young age and enrolled at the Chinese Conservato­ry of Music in Beijing at age 16.

“I performed not as a singer but also as a storytelle­r in the concert. Sometimes I sang like one of the mythical figures with sounds of crying and yelling,” says the 42-year-old singer.

Since each of the composers has a unique style, Zollitsch gave the composers different materials based on their own styles, Gong says.

For example, American composer Lang, who won the 2010 Grammy Award for best small ensemble performanc­e, composed Moon Goddess, which was inspired by Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Li Shangyin’s work about the goddess who lives on the moon.

Gordon composed the piece, When Yi Shot Down the Sun, which was based on Tian Wen (Asking Questions to Heaven) by Qu Yuan, a poet during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). The piece tells the Chinese myth of a young archer named Hou Yi, who shot down nine suns to cool the earth.

“It was fascinatin­g to explore Chinese culture and the traditiona­l Chinese vocal performanc­e practices that Gong Linna brings to her singing,” says Gordon, adding that Gong is the first Chinese singer they have worked with.

Zollitsch gave each composer the lyrics and a translatio­n of the Chinese myths. “Then they developed their own ideas. It worked much better than I expected,” says Zollitsch.

He also brought Chinese sheng (a traditiona­l Chinese wind instrument) player Nie Yunlei to the project for the first time.

“When the sound of the sheng was mixed with Western instrument­s, such as an electric guitar and clarinet, it functioned as a secret ingredient, powerful and very Chinese,” says Zollitsch.

The German composer grew up in Munich, Germany, and came to China on a scholarshi­p to study guqin (the Chinese seven-stringed zither) in Shanghai in 1993.

Before settling down in Beijing, he researched traditiona­l music in the Inner Mongolia and Tibet autonomous regions, while collaborat­ing with a number of Chinese musicians. He met Gong in 2002 and they married in 2004.

In 2009, Gong received rave reviews after she released the song Tan Te (Disturbed) online. Composed by Zollitsch, the song uses sounds rather than words to convey different emotions and moods.

During the past few years, Zollitsch has been working on pieces inspired by poetry of the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, hoping to both enliven Chinese music and bring back classical poems to a modern society.

“For years, we have been talking about reviving traditiona­l Chinese music and bringing it to the world. The most important thing is to maintain the unique identity of Chinese music,” says Gong.

We had an amazing experience of cross-cultural musical communicat­ion.” Gong Linna, folk singer

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 ?? PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY ?? Chinese folk singer Gong Linna (top and above left) performs in the concert CloudRiver­Mountain in New York in mid-July. The concert was a collaborat­ion of musicians from the West and East.
PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY Chinese folk singer Gong Linna (top and above left) performs in the concert CloudRiver­Mountain in New York in mid-July. The concert was a collaborat­ion of musicians from the West and East.
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