More than 2,000 years old, the pipa or Chinese lute is one of the older musical instruments in the world that is still played. An acknowledged leader on this ancient string ed-instru me nt is Shao Rong, a woman who is stretching musical boundaries with her playing which mixes traditional and contemporary elements. Shao's unique style can be heard on her first solo album, Orchid, on Pacific Moon Records.
Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Shao Rong (pronounced shaw-oh rong) first broke with tradition when she moved to Japan (she is currently living in Tokyo), although she maintains an allegiance to the Chinese lute which differs from the Japanese version. Although similarly shaped, the Japanese lute is more rhythm-oriented and played with a fan-shaped pick while the Chinese instrument stresses the melody and is plucked with the fingertips which are covered with special artificial nails. Shao's second move away from tradition is that she plays mostly modern compositions on her album. In addition, she utilizes a combination of ancient instruments -- guzheng (a Chinese zither invented thousands of years ago, now normally with 21 strings), erhu (a very old two-string Chinese lute played with a bow, originally constructed to imitate the human voice, and known in Japan as the niko), dizi (a small Chinese flute from the Tang Age two-thousand-years-ago) and shakuhachi (a Japanese bamboo flute) -- mixed with modern Western instrumentation like piano, guitar and bass.
No one knows when the Chinese pipa (pronounced pee-pah) was invented, but ancient records show it existed in the year 221 BC in the Oin Dynasty when Emperor Shih Huang Ti brought the provinces together under one rule. In 1998, Shao was chosen by the Japanese Agency of Culture to join Tempyo-Gafu, an Asian ancient-music ensemble, which performed special concerts at the United Nations and in major U.S. cities including New York, Washington and Los Angeles (the show was televised in Japan). Rong was allowed the high honor of playing an extremely valuable thousand-year-old five-string pipa, the oldest one in the world which makes it a national treasure. Over the years this instrument has evolved. Currently it has four strings tuned to A, E, D and A. The strings, originally made of silk, are now steel. As far back as records go, the teardrop-shaped body of the lute has always been made with red sandal wood, the length of neck from bamboo and the end of the neck from bull horn. Rong usually plays the pipa in the "Rinshi" style using all five fingers to create a tremelo effect which makes the instrument sound to Western ears like a mandolin one moment or a banjo the next.
Shao, always excelled at music and by the time she entered college, she was considered one of the top musical prodigies in all of China. She began taking piano lessons when she was five-years old and started lute lessons at age ten. When she was in her second year of junior high school, a new music school was established under the wing of the Beijing National Central Music Institute. Shao, along with 20,000 other students, took the entrance exams which only 12 passed. Of those, five were selected to attend this special university. Shao Rong was one of those chosen. At the Central Conservatory of Music in Bejing, she studied under the legendary pipa player Professor Liu Dehai, whose mastery was regarded as a national asset of the country.
After graduating from college, Rong returned to Shanghai in 1987 and joined the National Folk Music Band as a featured soloist, and she won a top award ("The Artistic Excellence Prize") as one of the outstanding artists at the Shanghai Arts Festival. "in order to experience a fresh environment for my music," says Rong, "I decided to move to Japan." In 1989, she enrolled at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music which led to her appearance in the Shiki Company production of "Madame Butterfly" in 1990 as both a pipa player and an actress. After graduation, her performance schedule increased.
In July 1998, she performed as a soloist with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra in the Japanese premiere of "Marco Polo," an opera by one of China's leading composers, Tan Dun. This led to an invitation from the Sapporo Symphony for her to appear as a soloist in a performance of "The Great Wall" by Japanese composer Ikuma Dan in April 1999. In July of that year, Rong had the honor of performing the world premiere of Tan Dun's "Concerto for Pipa and String Orchestra" at the Pan Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo which won Shao worldwide attention as a musician and led to performance requests from all over Asia, America and Europe. She also played at the Asian Composers Conference in Yokohama, and gave another Japanese premiere of Tan Dun's work at the Suntory Hall Summer Festival. In addition, Shao is a part of the unique Li-Hua Ensemble which performed with Missa Johnouchi on her Asian Blossoms album, also on Pacific Moon Records.
On Shao Rong's Orchid album, she is joined by various musicians including two other top Pacific Moon recording artists -- Jia Peng Fang on erhu and Naoyuki Onda on acoustic piano. The album was produced by the label's acclaimed recording team of Kazumasa Yoshioka and Seiichi Kyoda. Pacific Moon executives believe mood and ambience are important when listening to music, so they package scented incense sticks inside each CD case. Kyoda wrote * all of the tunes for the album with the exception of "Precious Moon" (which was based on the famous old Chinese classic song "Yue Er Gao"). Orchid begins and ends with two different versions of the tune "Wild Rose," the first featuring the lute with piano and erhu, and the second placing the pipa sounds alongside acoustic guitar.
"I tried many new musical techniques on this album," says Shao. "The piece 'A Day Goes By' is a kind not often found in the classics, so I enjoyed playing it. Similarly, because 'Bamboo Dance' has a rhythm not usually found in music for lutes, I found it refreshing to play. There are different styles in the playing of the lute. One is 'bukyoku' which is a very fierce, aggressive way of playing; and the other one, 'bunkyoku' is a gentler type of playing. Both styles are contained in 'One More Tale.' It was on the tune 'Unicorn' when, for the first time during these recording sessions, I played the lute with other instruments which are all of western origin like guitar, piano, bass and drums."
Concerning the tune "True Love," Shao says, "I love this melody. I could feel the beauty of the pipa and piano combined, and it went beyond my imagination. It's the kind of melody that somehow brings back old memories, and I felt as though my heart was being squeezed with the memories of my first true love. On different songs, I try to make the lute do different things. On 'Wild Rose' the tremelo of the lute is the sunlight reflecting on the river surface, while the tremelo pipa notes in 'Marketplace' express the moments of a cheerful morning in another country. I enjoy going to markets in foreign lands during my travels. The cheerful cries of the vendors to the people shopping are very musical."
For Rong, the music of "A Day Goes By" captures "the image of a small town in winter, closed to the outside by the snow and wind," while "Unicorn" conjures up another wintery picture .very quiet with powder snow failing in a forest carpeted by fallen leaves." Shao felt a different season in the music of "Bamboo Dance." She says, "When I was playing this piece, I could remember the hot summer days when I was a child and how happy I was to run along the path through the cool bamboo grove."
The shimmering sounds of the ancient pipa performing these haunting melodies, backed by a myriad of eastern and western instruments, creates a vibrant, dramatic and mesmerizing new musical sound appealing to audiences around the world.
