Concerts & Residencies
The Music From China ensemble consists of two or more players performing on Chinese instruments including the erhu (two-string fiddle), zheng (long zither), pipa (lute), yangqin (hammered dulcimer), ruan (picked guitar) and dizi (bamboo flute).
Our concerts include spoken introductions to both the instruments and pieces to give audience members background that can help them get the most out of the music.
Concert programs are of three main types:
Music of Silk & Bamboo
Masterworks from the classical and regional folk repertoire.
Contemporary Chinese Composers and Beyond
Contemporary works for Chinese and Western instruments from Asian and Western composers show how traditions can mix and how ancient art forms can take on new life. Composers in our repertoire include Zhou Long, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, Lei Liang, Huang Ruo, Wang Guowei, Eric Moe and Derek Bermel.
Chinese Music Past and Present
A mixed program consisting of the traditional and contemporary.
From our base in New York City, the Music From China ensemble has traveled to appear at the Library of Congress, American Folk Festival in Maine, Skaneateles Music Festival, Chautauqua Institution, San Diego Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO and Dionysia Center for Arts & Culture in Rome, Italy.
With other music groups, we have maintained an ongoing collaboration with the Four Nations Ensemble, which specializes in the French Baroque. Our joint concert called Plum Blossoms and Fleurs-de-Lys brings our traditions together. We have appeared with the Four Nations Ensemble at the Boston Early Music Festival, the 92nd Street Y in New York, the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., a chamber music festival at a vineyard in Santa Rosa, CA, and concerts in Newcastle, England with live broadcast by the BBC. As High Fidelity magazine wrote about our CD with the PRISM Quartet, “The bridge separating the ensembles’ musical worlds shortens practically to the point of disappearance.”
Closer to home, we have performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 92nd Street Y, Asia Society, American Museum of Natural History, New-York Historical Society, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Bard Graduate Center and the Brooklyn Museum.
Residencies
Residencies ranging from one day to one week can include concerts, pre-concert talks, lectures, and workshops for students. As we work out individualized programs with our hosts, the opportunities for imaginative interdisciplinary adventures are limitless.
A Music From China residency can complement programs not just in Music, but also Asian Studies, Asian-American Studies, History, Social Sciences, Political Science (for example, by highlighting the music of the Cultural Revolution), Comparative Literature, Dance, Art and – given Chinese music’s emphasis on nature – even Environmental Studies.
The institutions where Music From China has been Artist-in-Residence include Texas A&M University, Colgate University, Brandeis University, Princeton University, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Indiana State University at Terre-Haute, Haverford College, University of Dayton, University of Missouri at Kansas City, College of William and Mary, Lafayette College, Bard College, Gettysburg College, University of Vermont, Rhode Island University, King’s College, Hudson Opera House, Indiana University, Pittsburgh University, DePauw University and St. Lawrence University.