Pipa player Yang Jing is reinvigorating the ancient instrument with original compositions, international performances and genre fusions, Chen Nan reports.

Tang Dynasty (618-907) 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, four-stringed 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 Yellowstone National 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 the West.

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.

If you go

7:30 pm, Dec 17. Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, 9 Tianqiao South Street, Xicheng district, Beijing. 400-635-3355.

7:30 pm, Dec 24. Shanghai Bandu Cabin, First floor of Building 11, 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai. 021-6276-8267.

Source: chinaculture.org