Keep an eye out for 6 Stern competition finalists taking a 'Night Tour'

Grammy-nominated composer Zhou Tian traveled to Shanghai by late-night bullet train in 2019. The hustle and bustle at the train station prompted him to pen three chapters about tours at night, full of hopes.

"It was pre-pandemic. And I was looking at all those passengers at the station, wondering if some of them were embarking on new journeys, making their way back to their homes, or were just out for a little night-time tour," Zhou told Shanghai Daily.

The piece, commissioned by the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition, will be performed by the six finalists at the winners' concerts from August 26 to 28. Three concerts will be streamed on various platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the prestigious competition, which was initially slated for the summer of 2020, was forced to revise its plans several times.

The six finalists are Rino Yoshimoto (Japan), Thomas Lefort (France), Lin Ruifeng (China), Felicitas Schiffner (Germany), Angela Sin Ying Chan (China's Hong Kong) and Shannon Lee (US).

Ti Gong

In July, the organizers announced that the six finalists would be performing online rather than competing.

Each of the performers will take home US$20,000 to help fund their studies and musical careers. China's Lin is already scheduled to perform "Night Tour" with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in November.

The requirement of performing at least one Chinese concerto by the competition's finalists makes it necessary for the performers to become familiar with the history and culture of the composition. In turn, they take on the role as interpreters of Chinese culture, with the jury members serving as their audience.

Composer Zhou was asked by the jury to provide an "inspiration list" for the young musicians to better understand "Night Tour" and Chinese culture in general.

"It's a great idea," he said. "I also explained to them that 'Night Tour' is rooted in international and contemporary musical languages. So, not only does a foreign performer need to know more about Chinese culture, but Chinese performers also need to know more about the musical language around the world."

The list not only includes the famed Chinese erhu piece "Two Springs Reflecting the Moon" and Chen Kaige's 1993 film "Farewell My Concubine," but also music and other art pieces from around the world, such as "Nighthawks" (1942) by American realist painter Edward Hopper and "The Night's Music" by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok's "Out of Doors" set.

"What's depicted in "Night Tour" is a modern China, a China that has assimilated into the global village and cherishes the notion that "music has no bounds," Zhou explained.

"If you walk out of the concert hall right now to Huaihai Road or to Pudong in Shanghai, you can easily find the unique combination of tradition and modernity. So, it also takes a global perspective to perform contemporary Chinese music."

Born in Hangzhou in 1981, Zhou spent six years in Shanghai before taking off to study music in the United States. The 41-year-old thinks of his upbringing as multicultural and never wants to restrict himself as a Chinese-born composer.

The young performers kept asking him about every detail of the composition of the piece, but Zhou said he was looking forward to their interpretations.

"The best fun of music lies in its abstractness," he explained.

"Everyone can identify with it because it is abstract and draws on own experiences and feelings. It might end up being more in line with what my musical intentions were. Like watching a movie, that is. It's possible that the director did not mean for the scene to make you cry, but it's acceptable."