China Daily Global Edition (USA)
BABY GIVES MUSICIAN A SONG IN HIS HEART
Renowned clarinetist celebrates with an album to help mark International Women’s Day, Chen Nan reports.
About six months ago, clarinetist Wang Tao had good reason to celebrate and, to use a musical metaphor, blow his own trumpet — or in this case the clarinet. His daughter was born. The arrival of a baby is a joyous event for any family and for Wang, having a daughter makes his life complete, he proudly proclaims.
This is not his first child. He and his wife, the former Olympic gymnastics champion Liu Xuan, welcomed their son five years ago.
Wang has the perfect present for his new bundle of joy. As a gift to his newborn daughter, a new album, titled Talk to Her, performed by Wang, is released on Monday, on the occasion of International Women’s Day.
“It feels quite different having a son and having a daughter. There are different ways of communicating with them,” says Wang, 43, adding that, in his roles as a husband, a son, and a father, he also wants to dedicate the new album to the women of his family. “I want my daughter to listen to these music pieces as a form of early communication as she cannot speak yet.”
The album features classical music pieces, which portray different female characters. It opens with the well-known piece, La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair), composed by French composer Claude Debussy, followed by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fuer Elise (For Elise), and Ave Maria (Hail Mary) by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Wang also adapted Pavane pour une infante defunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess), a piano masterwork by French composer Maurice Ravel, which chronicles the life and death of a young, beloved princess; Garota de Ipanema (The Girl From Ipanema), a well-known, 1965 Grammy Award-winning Brazilian bossa nova song, and Solveig’s Song, by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, which was originally from Henrik Ibsen’s five-act play, Peer Gynt, and is an ode to a beautiful and sweet young woman.
Wang tries to give these classic works a fresh feel by adding electronic elements, bossa nova beats and stringed instruments to the various arrangements.
“I’ve performed those pieces throughout my career. For example, I played Solveig’s Song not long after I learned to play the clarinet,” says Wang. “With my life experiences, I can now interpret them with different color and meaning.
“The female characters depicted have various personalities, since music allows us to imagine,” says Wang, adding that, as well as showing the listeners different female images, he also wants them to “reflect and think about the women around them, especially their mothers, wives and daughters”.
He also adapted a popular Mandarin song, titled Woman Flower, first sung by Hong Kong pop diva Anita Mui in 1997, and he has released two versions: an instrumental piece and a vocal performance in collaboration with Chinese actress Ning Jing.
A best-selling female singer, Mui died of cancer in 2003 at 40.
Throughout the song, a woman’s whole life is recounted, from her time as a little girl to the day she passes away. Wang says he wants to “perform the music with a pure heart”.
“I had many ideas about adapting the song with my musical instrument. The version I chose is very clean and straightforward, without much embellishment,” he adds.
For the vocal version, he invited Ning to sing. The 48-year-old award-winning actress made headlines after she appeared in Hunan TV’s reality show, Sisters Riding the Winds and Breaking the Waves. “She is very confident and versatile. She is not defined by age,” says Wang.
Wang, who was born in Chengdu, Sichuan province, studied the cello and erhu (a two-stringed bowed instrument) in childhood before picking up the clarinet when he was 9. At the age of 11, he was admitted to the middle school affiliated with the Sichuan Conservatory of Music.
Wang was the first musician in China to receive a master’s degree in the clarinet from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and has been teaching there since 2002.
With more than 10 albums under his belt, Wang also won the Best Instrumental Album award at the Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan. He released his first crossover album, Night & Day, in 2014 after signing a contract with Universal Music China. The album, which merges the clarinet with pop, rock and jazz, received warm feedback.
“I’ve known my wife for more than 20 years and I’m lucky to have her. I cannot achieve musically without her support,” says Wang. “She is a very independent woman. Besides her career success, she also takes good care of the whole family. Whenever I return to my home after touring, I feel warm and relaxed.”
I cannot achieve musically without her support . ... Besides her career success, she also takes good care of the whole family.”
Wang Tao, 43, a clarinetist speaking about his wife, Liu Xuan, a former Olympic gymnastics champion