Shanghai Spring offering a world of music
A best-selling dance adaptation of a classic Chinese spy movie, boys’ and girls’ choirs from Europe and a percussion show about Chinese legendary female general Mulan are among the highlights of this year’s Shanghai Spring International Music Festival. They’ll join a packed program that will also feature jazz, symphonies, musicals, Chinese opera and more.
“It’s very important for us to curate a show that will highlight the legacy of our music traditions, the latest best international voices, as well as stage new work and talent from the city,” according to You Cun, deputy director of the organizing committee, who said that 30 to 40 percent of the stage for new work and talent is a festival tradition.
Shanghai Spring, which started in 1959, has been seeking more variety and cross-genre and cross-cultural collaborations, as well as reinterpretations of the classics. Thirty-seven shows, including concerts, dances, musicals and children’s shows, are to be presented between April 8 and 28 at various venues across the city. They will be accompanied by other events including a musical forum, an art open week at five local universities and a number of smaller themed festivals.
Two European choirs will be in town — and Lumina Coeli Girls’ Choir from France carries on a training tradition that dates back to the seventh century church choirs.
A local highlight in Innsbruck, the boys’ choir was founded as “Singing Boys of Wilten” and re-established in 1946 after the disruption of World War II. The youngest of the 190 members are just 6 years old.
With more than 25 studio and live recordings and major tours since the 1980s, the choir has a repertoire that includes early church music from the Renaissance to Romanticism eras, yodels and folk songs from the Alpine region, and opera and choral symphonies.
Lumina Coeli, the Autun Cathedral girls’ choir, trains members as early as the age of 3, carrying on a musical legacy and traditions from centuries past. During their tour in China, the choir will bring both classics from the 17th and 19th centuries, as well as ancient folk songs from France, Spain, Germany and Norway.
A young man set up a secret station sending telegraph messages containing key intelligence during the Japanese invasion in 1930s Shanghai. His “comrade” wife, who covered for him, was arrested but escaped with him. They fell in love and married in real life. They would continue sending messages for 12 years, until the husband was killed just before Shanghai was liberated in 1949.
The true story of Li Bai and his wife was made into “The Unfailing Radio Wave” in 1958. The movie, as well as countless adaptations on TV and movie screens, has acquainted generations of Chinese audiences with the story.
Shanghai Dance Theater, which has been exploring and experimenting new possibilities in recent years, reinterpreted the story as a thrilling dance drama featuring the theater’s lead dancers. The work received critical acclaim and was a hit with audiences when it premiered in December and will be a highlight of the Shanghai Spring festival.
The dance drama picks the most dramatic and visually-spooky sections and characters from the original movie and choreographs the thrills in delicately detailed sets featuring 1930s shikumen, qipao tailors, lanes, and other distinct features of the city.
The directors, both in their 30s, also manage to bring contemporary aesthetics and relevance to the story, rediscovering weak moments, struggles and authentic emotional connections while retaining the heroic highlights from the original story.
Another Chinese reinterpretation of the classics comes from the Ju Percussion Group, founded by percussionist TzongChing Ju in 1986. Members of the ensemble play a wide range of percussion instruments from jazz drums to Chinese gongs.
The group will present “Mulan,” one of its recent successful experiments that combines beats with Chinese opera to tell the story of the legendary female general Hua Mulan, who disguised herself as a male soldier to take her father’s place and quickly rose to lead the entire army.
Chinese bass drums, bowls, pots, marimba and many other typical and more innovative percussion instruments are used throughout the show to highlight the emotional turning points of the legendary heroine.