Musicians around the world collaborate at music festival

Soprano Lei Jia sings at the closing gala of the two-week long Beijing Music Festival on October 26, 2018. [Photo provided to China Plus]

A prominent feature at the recent Beijing Music Festival was the frequent and friendly exchanges between Chinese and Western musicians, on the journeys to the cutting edge of modern theatrical performances.

Our reporter Xu Fei takes a closer look.

The sound you just heard was a performance by the world-famous Ma YoYo-led Silk Road Ensemble that combined percussion instruments with the Spanish bagpipes, known as the Galician guitar.

During three weeks Beijing Music Festival, audiences had the chance to hear musicians from China and overseas playing together to create music that joined together aspects from the musical cultures of their respective countries.

One of these performances was a concerto titled "A Vision of Tomorrow", which combined the Chinese Pipa with the Western cello.

Zhao Lin was the composer.

"This concerto employs an international orchestra to interpret a Chinese story using well-understood musical language. Musicians from all over the world were invited to China to share their feelings about Chinese culture. Meanwhile, on this platform, musicians were conducting exchanges, showcasing the distinctive features of their folk music. It was a process of listening to each other and then collaborating with each other."

During the festival, there was quite a few modern theatrical performances that took classical Chinese tales such as 'The Orphan of Zhao' and 'Farewell My Concubine' that were performed by international actors, or that were adapted into performances in the style of a Western opera.

And classic western tales such as L'Orfeo, which is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, was taken to the stage in an original performance by a Chinese composer and director.

Zou Shuang, the artistic director of the festival, talked about the melding of the two artistic perspectives.

"In terms of selecting programs for our target audiences, we couldn't just focus on purely Chinese stories, like traditional Chinese myths, which are hardly understood by international performers. And we seldom recommended relatively complicated Western operas for domestic audiences. So we began working hard on finding new ways to interpret classic pieces, which enable the audiences who don't know much about them to come appreciate the traditions of these pieces and what they can look like after undergoing our explorative transformations."

The artistic director teamed up with pioneering Chinese composer Fay Kueen Wang in co-producing a new performance of the opera L'Orfeo. They are assisted in this endeavor by the American band Invisible Anatomy.

Brendon Randall-Myers, a co-founder of the band, thinks their premiere of L'Orfeo would have been impossible without their close international collaboration.

"To me, it seems that this kind of production is maybe only possible with this kind of international collaboration. Part of the kind of translation I expect even adapting this old opera in the first places, thinking about the relationship between different countries. That's it! It's a prize to me."

Benjamin Wallace, the percussionist of the band, agrees.

"I think it's really wonderful. This international collaboration is just happening. I think it's really fun to have worked with this big international crew, of, you know, to hear; to work with the Chinese singers, to work with, the like the choreographer who's from London and the set designers who are from the Netherlands, and we're from the States. I very much enjoyed this sort of like cross-international collaboration. I actually really enjoy when this sort of classic, older stories that come from like the European repertoire get adapted into this new modern thing. So the addition of having like a news crew coming on the stage, when your DJ passes at the beginning, and staging a whole new thing in a wedding venue. I actually really, really enjoy."

The opera saw western artists in technical roles like lighting, video, and costume design, and choreography, work hand-in-hand with young Chinese performers from the Central Academy of Drama.

As the festival's artistic director explains, the result was a substantial performance that was developed from scratch.

"Our intention was to discover a common will in China for all other international crews. Similar operas would have probably been produced in other nations. We hoped to produce an opera in China, that paid homage to the premiere of L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi in 1607. Our team includes Chinese composer, Chinese tenors, Chinese student chorus, and young performers. We created the opportunity for them to demonstrate that China, starting with nothing, has the ability to produce a significant opera."

Over the past 20 years, the festival has been on the forefront of raising awareness of Chinese culture and increasing opportunities for international cultural exchanges. Zou Shuang said that this is set to continue in the festival's future years.