China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Plucking new heart strings
Player Yang Jing is reinvigorating the ancient instrument with original compositions, international performances and genre fusions, Chen Nan reports.
Tang Dynasty (618907) poet Bai Juyi described the sound of the pipa as “pearls landing on a jade plate”. Performer Yang Jing says that’s but one of the sounds the 2,000-year-old, fourstringed plucked instrument can produce.
Yang will display the lute’s versatility during 65-minute performances of Symphony On Four Strings— Yang Jing’s Pipa and Multimedia Concert in Beijing on Dec 17 and in Shanghai on Dec 24. The shows blend the ancient instrument with electronic and symphonic elements, plus multimedia effects.
The concert will feature eight original pipa pieces, including Dance Along the Old Silk Road, which she wrote in 1993 to explore the instrument’s origins; Nine Jade Chains, which was inspired by Bai’s poem, The Song of The Pipa Player; and Geyser, which was inspired by YellowstoneNational Park’s geothermal wonders.
Yang will also give lectures at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music and China Conservatory of Music, and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
Yang, who started playing the pipa at 6, left her hometown in Xuchang, Henan province, at 18 to attend the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, from which she graduated in 1986.
The musician moved to Switzerland in 2003, where she still lives, to complete a master’s degree in composition at Bern University of Arts.
“Switzerland’s natural splendors — its skies and forests — still surprise and inspire me,” she says.
Yang has spent much of the last decade touring theWest.
“I wasn’t sure (Chinese) audiences would enjoy my music,” she explains.
“Since last year, some ofmy player Yang Jing
I’ve been trying to find new sounds for the It’s a process of discovering myself.” player has performed around the world over the past few decades.
Yang Jing, friends have been telling me it’s the right time to return to China, where audiences are embracing a variety of styles. So, I thought I’d give it a try.”
Immediately after she graduated in 1986, Yang started as a pipa soloist at the China National Traditional Orchestra in 1986.
A decade later, she founded China’s first all-women traditional- instrument quartet, Qing Mei Jing Yue. Other instruments included the erhu (a two-stringed fiddle), the yangqin (a Chinese dulcimer) and the guzheng (a Chinese zither).
Yang left the orchestra in 1998 to move to Japan to study under composer Minoru Miki (1930-2011). That inspired her to explore contemporary music.
“I’ve learned a lot of new and different concepts ... to enhance my artistic individuality,” Yang says of her cooperation withMiki.
She has since performed pipa concertos by Miki with several Japanese orchestras.
While experimenting with the pipa, Yang breaks with orthodoxy by composing her own works since the instrument’s traditional repertoire is limited.
Yang also believes incorporating the ancient instrument into contemporary genres offers a way for it to survive modernity. She often improvises when performing with musicians of other styles.
“I’ve been trying to find new sounds for the pipa,” she says.
“It’s a process
As for her musical journey, Yang met Swiss percussionist Pierre Favre at the Beijing Jazz Festival in 1998, and they teamed up for concerts in Beijing and Shanghai in 2000. The duo released the album Moments, which was recorded live that year.
The previous year, she and pianist Arthur Mattli coproduced the album Village in the Floods — believed to be the first professional recording of piano and pipa— a spontaneous idea to raise money for China’s flood victims.
In the cause of her musical experiments, Yang has labored to balance her instrument’s sounds with Western and contemporary elements during her early years touring overseas with various artists.
“But after many experiments, I’ve been amazed by the harmony between Eastern and Western instruments,” she says.
She can play several instruments, including the flute, guqin (a seven-string plucked instrument) and violin.
Yang believes the creation of new works in new styles can help traditional instruments like the pipa not only survive but even thrive in changing times. of discoveringmyself.”