Training musicians, not stars, in China

Training musicians, not stars, in China

By Joyce Hor-Chung Lau
International Herald Tribune
THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2005
FOSHAN, China
Xiong Yin, a soft-spoken 19-year-old cellist, has been training to become a musician for as long as she can remember. Her parents, cellists themselves, enrolled her in piano lessons at 4 years old and cello lessons at 6. She entered the Shanghai Conservatory when she was about 9 years old and was soon sent on government-organized trips to the West to perform and compete. At 14, she moved more than 1,000 kilometers from home to accept a scholarship at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.
Xiong is an expressive player with a good track record and fine technique, but she is not considered a star by the standards of China's musical elite. What makes her stand out, in a nation all but obsessed with producing the next world-famous virtuoso, is that she has little intention of becoming the next big thing.
"I don't necessarily want to be a soloist," she said while hauling around a cello case decorated with rainbow-colored stickers and small stuffed animals. "Is that strange to say? It's so much pressure. Maybe I like chamber music, trios and quartets - Mozart's, Haydn's and Ravel's. I like Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' and the Shostakovich eight. It feels good to work in a group."
It's an ironic thing to say, considering that Xiong was later chosen out of more than 200 students as the winner of the concerto competition at the inaugural Canton International Summer Music Academy. Located in what seems like the last parcel of southern China's lush hills not overtaken by factories, the academy is a first in the country and has been nicknamed "the Chinese Tanglewood" for its casual approach, use of a resident professional orchestra (the Guangzhou Symphony), picturesque setting and emphasis on ensemble playing.
"There is a very competitive attitude, which is very Asian," said the conductor Charles Dutoit, Cisma's music director and a regular visitor to China since 1982. "So the academy is very essential to the mentality toward music in China.
"The children in China learn an instrument and think they will be the next Heifetz," he continued, referring to the late virtuoso. "But you have millions of musicians in the world and only one Heifetz. It is the wrong attitude. It is simply not a good education system. Most young musicians in China will not make a good career if this continues."
Dutoit, along with the concert violinist Chantal Juillet, met repeatedly with the Guangdong Province authorities before finalizing the plan for Cisma. They had to find a middle ground between the government's desire to control the students' lives and the West's more liberal approach to education.
"The Europeans have a humanistic relationship with music, and our musicians grow up more slowly," Dutoit said. "In China, they grow up so fast. I just heard a 13-year-old pianist play with fantastic skill but play with no other knowledge. What does such a 13-year-old know about life?"
Apparently, not much, if judged by the participants from China's outer provinces, as they stared wide-eyed at the chandeliers, fountains, pillars and pools of the ostentatious Butterfly Valley resort, where Cisma is taking place courtesy of the Guangdong government. Clutching backpacks and instrument cases, they lined up to receive student packs, filled with rules against drinking, smoking, leaving the grounds, sleeping late or fraternizing with the opposite sex. (One rule purportedly proposed by the government - "Do not fall in love" - was later rescinded by Cisma's foreign advisers.)
"This project is very unusual for a country like China," said Lo King-man, Cisma's director of administration and the former head of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, who first offered the scholarship to Xiong.
"Conservatories on the mainland concentrated only on finding the one student who could win the world's most difficult competitions, like Yundi Li did, and the rest can be forgotten," he said. "It's very wasteful to develop all that talent, and then drop it."
Juillet, the head of the academy's chamber music department, struggled with China's singular focus on virtuosity when she conducted her 12-city audition tour through Southeast Asia.
"There is a lack of knowledge in China," said Juillet, who chose 200 musicians after hearing more than 500. "Some teachers did not want students to audition because there is a stigma that you only become an orchestral or chamber music player if you've failed otherwise. It's a very competitive world and conditions kids to be disappointed.
"I want to show these students how much fun and joy and friendship there can be with ensemble music," she added.
The Chinese government's efforts to build concert halls, opera houses and music academies all over the country is not without political motive. Ever concerned about its place in the world, China is eager to prove that it is not only an economic powerhouse, but a cultural one as well. In this context, Cisma is particularly significant because it is said that the late Leonard Bernstein had planned to open a music camp in China more than 15 years ago but backed out because China was not developed enough or open enough at the time.
"He wanted to do it with principal chairs of the Vienna Philharmonic and got quite advanced in his planning until 1989," Juillet said, referring to the year of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and widespread social unrest. Instead, Bernstein took his idea to Japan. In 1990, he opened the Sapporo-based Pacific Music Festival, a critically acclaimed academy where Dutoit later served as the music director and where Juillet works as the head of chamber music.
To do its part to bolster China's place on the international cultural scene, the Guangdong government offered full scholarships to all 200 Cisma students, whether there was financial need or not. It also built a 600-seat concert hall at the resort which, two days before the opening, was still being finished by camouflage-clad members of the People's Liberation Army - a sure sign that someone high in the ranks was pulling strings.
According to Juillet, the government "knows they don't know much" about producing an academy like this, which is why IMG Artists, the London-based arts management company, was hired to provide a stable of foreign tutors, including principal players from orchestras like the Montreal Symphony and the Royal Concertgebouw. IMG also arranged for the concert violinist Akiko Suwanai and other soloists to perform.
Still, the authorities wanted to keep a certain degree of control. "They wanted to approve all the repertoire the students played," Juillet said. And despite the emphasis on fun and cooperation, a concerto competition was included, perhaps out of fear that top young Chinese musicians would not attend without one.
This summer's winner, Xiong, will perform Elgar's Cello Concerto on July 31 during the finale concert, which, following a Tanglewood tradition, will feature Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" and fireworks. "My parents told me that, only if I win, will they come to see me," she said.


FOSHAN, China Xiong Yin, a soft-spoken 19-year-old cellist, has been training to become a musician for as long as she can remember. Her parents, cellists themselves, enrolled her in piano lessons at 4 years old and cello lessons at 6. She entered the Shanghai Conservatory when she was about 9 years old and was soon sent on government-organized trips to the West to perform and compete. At 14, she moved more than 1,000 kilometers from home to accept a scholarship at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.
Xiong is an expressive player with a good track record and fine technique, but she is not considered a star by the standards of China's musical elite. What makes her stand out, in a nation all but obsessed with producing the next world-famous virtuoso, is that she has little intention of becoming the next big thing.
"I don't necessarily want to be a soloist," she said while hauling around a cello case decorated with rainbow-colored stickers and small stuffed animals. "Is that strange to say? It's so much pressure. Maybe I like chamber music, trios and quartets - Mozart's, Haydn's and Ravel's. I like Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' and the Shostakovich eight. It feels good to work in a group."
It's an ironic thing to say, considering that Xiong was later chosen out of more than 200 students as the winner of the concerto competition at the inaugural Canton International Summer Music Academy. Located in what seems like the last parcel of southern China's lush hills not overtaken by factories, the academy is a first in the country and has been nicknamed "the Chinese Tanglewood" for its casual approach, use of a resident professional orchestra (the Guangzhou Symphony), picturesque setting and emphasis on ensemble playing.
"There is a very competitive attitude, which is very Asian," said the conductor Charles Dutoit, Cisma's music director and a regular visitor to China since 1982. "So the academy is very essential to the mentality toward music in China.
"The children in China learn an instrument and think they will be the next Heifetz," he continued, referring to the late virtuoso. "But you have millions of musicians in the world and only one Heifetz. It is the wrong attitude. It is simply not a good education system. Most young musicians in China will not make a good career if this continues."
Dutoit, along with the concert violinist Chantal Juillet, met repeatedly with the Guangdong Province authorities before finalizing the plan for Cisma. They had to find a middle ground between the government's desire to control the students' lives and the West's more liberal approach to education.
"The Europeans have a humanistic relationship with music, and our musicians grow up more slowly," Dutoit said. "In China, they grow up so fast. I just heard a 13-year-old pianist play with fantastic skill but play with no other knowledge. What does such a 13-year-old know about life?"
Apparently, not much, if judged by the participants from China's outer provinces, as they stared wide-eyed at the chandeliers, fountains, pillars and pools of the ostentatious Butterfly Valley resort, where Cisma is taking place courtesy of the Guangdong government. Clutching backpacks and instrument cases, they lined up to receive student packs, filled with rules against drinking, smoking, leaving the grounds, sleeping late or fraternizing with the opposite sex. (One rule purportedly proposed by the government - "Do not fall in love" - was later rescinded by Cisma's foreign advisers.)
"This project is very unusual for a country like China," said Lo King-man, Cisma's director of administration and the former head of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, who first offered the scholarship to Xiong.
"Conservatories on the mainland concentrated only on finding the one student who could win the world's most difficult competitions, like Yundi Li did, and the rest can be forgotten," he said. "It's very wasteful to develop all that talent, and then drop it."
Juillet, the head of the academy's chamber music department, struggled with China's singular focus on virtuosity when she conducted her 12-city audition tour through Southeast Asia.
"There is a lack of knowledge in China," said Juillet, who chose 200 musicians after hearing more than 500. "Some teachers did not want students to audition because there is a stigma that you only become an orchestral or chamber music player if you've failed otherwise. It's a very competitive world and conditions kids to be disappointed.
"I want to show these students how much fun and joy and friendship there can be with ensemble music," she added.
The Chinese government's efforts to build concert halls, opera houses and music academies all over the country is not without political motive. Ever concerned about its place in the world, China is eager to prove that it is not only an economic powerhouse, but a cultural one as well. In this context, Cisma is particularly significant because it is said that the late Leonard Bernstein had planned to open a music camp in China more than 15 years ago but backed out because China was not developed enough or open enough at the time.
"He wanted to do it with principal chairs of the Vienna Philharmonic and got quite advanced in his planning until 1989," Juillet said, referring to the year of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and widespread social unrest. Instead, Bernstein took his idea to Japan. In 1990, he opened the Sapporo-based Pacific Music Festival, a critically acclaimed academy where Dutoit later served as the music director and where Juillet works as the head of chamber music.
To do its part to bolster China's place on the international cultural scene, the Guangdong government offered full scholarships to all 200 Cisma students, whether there was financial need or not. It also built a 600-seat concert hall at the resort which, two days before the opening, was still being finished by camouflage-clad members of the People's Liberation Army - a sure sign that someone high in the ranks was pulling strings.
According to Juillet, the government "knows they don't know much" about producing an academy like this, which is why IMG Artists, the London-based arts management company, was hired to provide a stable of foreign tutors, including principal players from orchestras like the Montreal Symphony and the Royal Concertgebouw. IMG also arranged for the concert violinist Akiko Suwanai and other soloists to perform.
Still, the authorities wanted to keep a certain degree of control. "They wanted to approve all the repertoire the students played," Juillet said. And despite the emphasis on fun and cooperation, a concerto competition was included, perhaps out of fear that top young Chinese musicians would not attend without one.
This summer's winner, Xiong, will perform Elgar's Cello Concerto on July 31 during the finale concert, which, following a Tanglewood tradition, will feature Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" and fireworks. "My parents told me that, only if I win, will they come to see me," she said.



See link at http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/20/features/music.php

An artists' community takes shape on Beijing's edge

By Joyce Hor-Chung Lau
International Herald Tribune
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2006
BEIJING Changdian village, on the eastern edge of Beijing, is the kind of place where sheep are herded down the streets, laundry is left to dry on trees and the town garbage collector is a guy with a donkey cart. It is also set to be the home of the new Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as a complex of artists' studios and exhibition spaces.
"The most interesting art developments this year will be in the periphery of this area," said Zhang Zhaohui, a well-known curator who will act as the director of the museum, known as BJ Moca. "There are probably more than 300 unique artists' studios in the east district."
Zhang, his breath frosting slightly in the morning cold, stood on a plot of land he had rented from a farmer and explained how one building would become an 1,100-square-meter, or 11,850- square-foot, exhibition space, while an empty block across the dirt yard would become the BJ Moca headquarters. On yet another site, he plans to open about 30 studios and two exhibition spaces in a complex he says is inspired by New York's PS1 project.
It takes an extraordinary amount of optimism to look at a bunch of unheated concrete blocks in an obscure Chinese village and imagine opening a museum and studio complex by this summer.
But Zhang, a native Beijinger, has seen some extraordinary growth in his hometown. China's economic boom has also meant a boom in its contemporary art market, as well as a transformation of the rural and industrial suburbs outside the nation's capital. As downtown rents skyrocket, farmhouses and abandoned factories on the fringes of this sprawling city of 15 million are being overtaken by artists and gallery owners seeking larger and more affordable spaces.
The cultural development of east Beijing began in the early 2000s, when local artists, along with one enterprising bookstore owner, moved into the Dashanzi area, home to numerous abandoned former East German factories.
They stumbled onto a gold mine. The area's '50s-era Bauhaus architecture gave their studios and galleries a fashionably edgy, underground feel, while the timing of their move coincided with the rising price of Chinese contemporary art internationally. Dealers and gallerygoers, thrilled by the idea of viewing increasingly saleable works in such cool surroundings, have flocked to the area.
The larger area now known as the 798 Art District - named after Factory #798, the best known of the renovated spaces - has developed in the blink of an eye. Today, against a backdrop of smokestacks and giant factory pipes, shiny new signs advertise more than 30 galleries, as well as cafés, restaurants, boutiques, small media companies and even a new nightclub.
But despite the commercialization of the area, 798's art has generally not suffered. There are none of the endless landscapes and portraits of pretty Chinese women in red dresses sold in markets downtown. Instead, there are works by critically acclaimed overseas artists, like the French conceptualist Daniel Buren, who has transformed the three-story Galleria Continua into a site-specific installation. Solo shows at 798 are granted to both big-name Chinese artists and to the young, like the 24-year-old Chi Peng, whose sexually disturbing series is displayed next to old Maoist slogans painted in red on the walls - a leftover from when the White Space Gallery was a factory during the Cultural Revolution.
798 has not lost its gritty touch - there are still far more factory workers riding home on bicycles than SUVs - but in a city where the average monthly salary is less than 4,000 yuan, or about $500, it has already ceased to be an affordable refuge for many artists.
So artists and galleries are moving even farther away to what seem like an endless number of little-known villages on Beijing's eastern fringes: Caochangdi (which means "Grasslands" in Mandarin), Jiuchang ("Liquor Factory") and the twin communities of Feijiacun and Saojiacun, the second of which teeters between flourishing as an artists' community and being demolished by the government.
The new F2 Gallery has wisely arranged for a shuttle bus to bring people from 798 to its space in Caochangdi, which even local taxi drivers have a hard time finding. It's a grubby little hamlet and the last place one would expect to see works by Julian Schnabel and the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, two darlings of the New York art scene, but that's what F2 showed when it first opened in January. It followed up quickly with another high-profile opening Feb. 18, with brazenly political works by Sheng Qi, the Chinese artist known for cutting off his pinky finger in protest after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
Fabien Fryns, F2's Belgian owner, who lives in an apartment behind the gallery, says he deliberately opened somewhere off the beaten track.
He dismissed the suggestion that his gallery was too far away. "We had between 200 and 300 for the Schnabel- Basquiat opening," he said. "And anyway, everything changes so fast in Beijing. A new highway goes up, and suddenly you're a half-hour closer to the city."
He could not have moved to Caochangdi village at a better time. The village is also home to the pioneering China Art and Archive Warehouse, LA Gallery, the CourtYard Annex and a new government-funded film museum.
There is a similar level of growth in another east Beijing village called Jiuchang, home to what has probably been the most impressive new development in this area: The Korean-owned Arario gallery's five-building complex, with 3,000 square meters of exhibition space. Yun Chea Gab, the gallery director, predicts that the area will be "redeveloped as a huge art district, in accordance with the cultural boom in this area."
Arario Beijing's debut exhibition, "Beautiful Cynicism," has dozens of works by international stars like Cindy Sherman and Yue Minjun, and it will be followed by a series of solo shows.
In general, moneyed galleries and dealers have an easier time in east Beijing than actual artists looking for studio spaces. Mainland China's muddled bureaucracy often makes it difficult to ascertain whether a piece of land is private or public, belongs to a farmer or a government department, or is legal or not legal to rent. Even 798's fate was uncertain for several years before it became as well-known as it is today.
While some parts of East Beijing are flourishing, things are less rosy at Saojiacun, an artists' community that has already been partially demolished by the government, which says the development is illegal.
According to Chao Ziyi, a ceramic artist and sculptor at Saojiacun, there were originally about 200 artists working in about 150 studios in the area before the government sent around demolition notices. Now some of Saojiacun's red-brick, one-story studios have been bulldozed, and he is one of the few artists left.
Sitting in his frigid studio, with his 2- year-old son wrapped in so many layers of winter clothes he can barely walk, Chao insists he will stay. He can use a neighbor's electric kiln, he says, and in any case is busy with an exhibition coming up at a gallery in the 798 area.
"The first demolition notification came last summer, and we put up a fight for its survival. Artists were feeling despondent, because we put so much time and money into fixing this place up," he said. "Several months ago, when the police force came, we planned to move even farther north and east. But I found nowhere better than here. So I decided it was useless to worry about what I cannot control."
Despite it all, "I think this area will grow a lot," Chao said.
Zhang, who is hoping to open the BJ Moca, has also had issues opening what will be one of the few privately run, contemporary art museums in the country.
"It's totally different from the West," Zhang said. "There are no art protection laws, no tax exemptions to encourage corporate sponsorship. China is not part of the international museum network, where there are lots of exchanges and shared resources."
Still, Zhang maintains the sense of ambition and optimism that has driven these unlikely developments in Beijing. "In two or three years, we hope to be exchanging from London, New York and Paris," he said.