The zither comes hither

Guqin player Sun Ying and singer Yang Huahua blend guqin with vocals and release their album, Fantastic Telling, featuring seven songs they adapted from some of the most famous traditional Chinese pieces. CHINA DAILY

The image of an ancient Chinese man chanting poems while playing the musical instrument with more than 3,000 years of history in a bamboo forest has been portrayed in many martial arts movies and novels. The beautiful sound blends with nature. This is also how Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Wang Wei (701-761) described the guqin in his poem, Zhu Lin Guan (Bamboo Grove Pavilion).

Sun says guqin performances and singing typically share the same melodies. But she tries to arrange the music to give the instrument a more contemporary role in her adaptation, to literally strike a chord with today's audiences.

The guqin is new to Yang, who's known for performing with pop singers and rock bands. As she improvised with Sun, she gradually fell in love the instrument, which she says produces deep and meditative sounds.

They considered adding more instruments but ultimately decided against it.

"We want to present the guqin and vocals with simplicity," says Yang, adding that she has adjusted her singing style to match the instrument's "narrative and natural" sound.

Yang started studying vocals as a child and enrolled in the China Conservatory of Music to study opera singing in Beijing in 2012.

Both Sun and Yang signed on with Modern Sky's new label, L, or Lyu in Chinese, referring to discipline and regulation, which promotes music based on traditional Chinese instruments.

According to the new label's manager, Guo Yihuan, who is also the album's producer, L aims to "jump out of the box to seek a new world built on contemporary musicians' understandings of traditional instruments, giving these ancient instruments new life".

The album was released at an event that Modern Sky hosted in Beijing in November that reviewed its achievements in 2020 and revealed its plans for 2021.

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn