Sound of Music
An Excerpt of Peking Opera - Climbing the Mountain, Fighting the Tiger
Recompose: Wang Jiaxun
Xylophone: Wang Shen
Suona Horn: Shi Nannan
Performance Team: WangJiaXun Percussion Group
“Climbing the Mountain, Fighting the Tiger” excerpted from the Peking Opera work "Outsmart the Tiger Mountain" was recomposed by the founder of the group, Wang Jiaxun, in 1995 and premiered at the Pontivi Festival in France in 1997.
The work combines Western melodic percussion instruments like xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, and traditional Chinese Peking Opera percussion instruments such as drums, small gongs, cymbals and large gongs.
The combination of Chinese and Western orchestration not only retains the tradition of music, but also gives it vitality, bringing more fresh and rich experience to the audience.
Jiangzhou Drum Music - The Fighting of Bull with Tiger
Drummer: Gao Chenxu, Feng Piaoyang
Performance Team: WangJiaXun Percussion Group
Jiangzhou Drum Music is a traditional folk music in Xinjiang County, Shanxi Province of China, listed as the world intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO.
"The Fighting of Bull with Tiger" is a representative piece of Jiangzhou Drum Music, featuring two large drums on stage, symbolizing the two beasts of the bull and tiger. The music consists of three chapters: meeting, playing, and fighting. Using flexible drumming techniques, the players shows the audience the stubbornness and fierceness of the bull and the mighty and brave of the tiger.
Hymn to Life
Recompose: Wang Shen
Performance Team: WangJiaXun Percussion Group
The Hymn to Life is a percussion ensemble piece adapted by Wang Shen. Retaining the original music style and rhythm of The Lonely Warrior, this work incorporates the melody and rhythm elements of Coldplay's Viva La Vida at the beginning of the music, and used the ensemble form of keyboard percussion and drums to show the pure music performance, which made the audience have a refreshing experience and feeling.
The Dual Olympics City
Recompose: Wang Shen
Performance Team: WangJiaXun Percussion Group
The Dual Olympics City is a percussion ensemble piece adapted by Wang Shen. Since Beijing successfully hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, it became the first “Dual Olympics City” in the world. This work combines the theme songs of the two Olympic Games with a promotional song. Retaining the different musical styles of each work, it uses the orchestration method of marching percussion, which is an innovation in the form of percussion performance.
Sound of Wood from Aershan
Aershan City is located in the northwest of Inner Mongolia, across the southwestern foothills of the Greater Khingan Mountains. It is rich in forest resources. Common woods include elm, pine, and birch. Bai Chunshan is a cadre of an enterprise in Aershan. He often uses his spare time to go into the mountains with his wife Liu Yan to look for discarded wood to make root art and small handicrafts. In 2004, by chance, Bai Chunshan found a piece of wood and used his ingenuity to make it into a "one-piece" erhu.
Over the next twenty years, after they found wood that met the angle requirements for making violins, they made them into instruments such as Erhu or Sihu. This wood is rare and they have only made eight instruments to date. These musical instruments, in which the piano stem and the piano barrel are integrated, have no splicing, no gaps, and no cracks, which reduces the damage to the tone during the propagation of sound waves, thus improving the sound quality. The sound played with it is beautiful and rich, and has been recognized by many professionals.
Currently, Bai Chunshan is rated as the inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Aershan City. He has also successfully applied for a Utility Model Patent for "a stringed instrument with a rod and sound box integrated to improve timbre." After that, he and his wife will continue to search for and make one-piece musical instruments, and hope that more people can hear the sound of Aershan Linhai played by these instruments.