Chamber ensemble fuses traditional Chinese instruments, with modern, Western compositions

The ethereal, haunting sounds of Chinese traditional music can instantly transport a person to placid mountain lakes or back in time to the country's rich historical past. The melodic compositions are recognized as an integral part of Chinese history and culture, yet, as purely "Chinese" the instruments may be, their roots are multicultural. Traders along the ancient Silk Road brought music in addition to their wares and so the foreign sounds of instruments like the Arabian lute transformed into the Chinese pipa.

The Music From China Youth Orchestra performs its debut concert at New York's Carnegie Hall on March 1

New York-based Music From China (MFC), a chamber ensemble that has a passion for educational outreach, represents the modern evolution of Chinese traditional music. And like the Silk Road composers in times past, the group combines the most iconic traditional Chinese instruments--such as the erhu, pipa, zheng and dizi--with Western instruments in breathtaking modern compositions that take the best of both worlds and create an entirely new sound.

"We wanted to play traditional music and develop it in contemporary ways," says Executive Director Susan Cheng.

The group was founded in 1984, and to celebrate its 25th anniversary next year MFC has commissioned two new compositions. One is a blending of traditional Chinese music with a saxophone quartet called PRISM Quartet, a group chosen by Musical America as "Outstanding Young Artists" and winners of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, among other accolades. The new pieces will be recorded on a CD, and the two groups will go on tour across the country.

"[Prism] said it was the first time they had ever heard of this type of combination of saxophones with traditional Chinese instruments," Cheng told Beijing Review.

But do all Western instruments mix harmoniously with the sounds of the Chinese erhu or pipa?

"It's in the way it is written," says Artistic Director Wang Guowei, with Cheng translating. "Anything can be combined with the right composer and most composers are open to new instruments."

Wang is composing another piece to be performed in 2009. The blended works have found fans across the world.