May: we visit the Shanghai Conservatory

We had been very much looking forward to visiting the Shanghai Conservatory, as western musicians have for many decades.
They graciously welcomed us for a morning there there before our plane to Beijing this afternoon. It turned out to be a fascinating, fun and moving moment and we were so glad we could do it. While most visiting performers exchange and work with the students on solo material, we were, we think, the first to come and exchange with one of the choruses.

Legendary Professor Zhou Xiao Yan welcomes us.

There are now four choruses at the Conservatory. A group of 20 mixed voices - from the western opera ("bel canto") department, directed by Professor Yi Jie- sang for us first: a Chinese folk song which was very beautiful, and which we might like to do ourselves, and a chorus from Elijah. What lovely rich voices! We talked about singing in ensemble and the different responsibilities of the singer in that context- not only to the horizontal melodic line, but to the vertical aspect ( the chords) and to the underlying accompaniment, and the tuning. We demonstrated some particular challenges from the set of Barber songs which are on our program. Another group -all women from the Department of Chinese music - then gave an amazing performance of a contemporary Chinese composition.

In response to a question about whether singing in the counter tenor register is damaging, Gregory vocalized all the men up into their falsetto voices. They were skeptical, and there was a certain amount of laughter, but they did it, and we hope we proved the point that the counter tenor voice is natural and not dangerous, and doesn't hurt.

He Xiao Nan, a singer from the Chinese music department, gave a beautiful rendition of a Chinese song, complete, of course, with formalized gestures.


Matt then asked her to sing Molihua (the folk song which we sing on our program) with us. Not only do we never get to sing with girls and that was fun, but she was not shy about leading us through her interpretation of the song, and we learned a lot!

Then we were invited to lunch and friendly exchange with the professors, students, and our travelling patrons who had
observed this special moment.

May: Shanghai

This is getting to be quite a lot of fun! A big crowd tonight in Shanghai, many of whom had been last night as well.
You couldn't wish for a warmer and more vociferous response. Our program was "Sounds of America" ( aka "Wondrous Free.") When we came out for our encore ( which the titles had NOT announced this time) somebody yelled out "Molihua!". Word seems to have spread..so we obliged. The Chinese folk song encores seem to be much appreciated, as does Jace's virtuoso announcement in Chinese at the beginning.

In the dignitary room before the show were a Vice Mayor of Shanghai ( whose daughter sings in an a cappella group), Professor Zhou Xiao Yan of the Shanghai Conservatory ( where we will go tomorrow morning en route to the airport) and a young and famous Qun Opera actor who said he had come because he likes to learn from all kinds of performing. Choral singing seems to be growing in China - there were a lot of young people who identified themselves as singers, as well as members of an elder chorus, and many people clearly just discovering this kind of performance.

There was pretty much mayhem when we came out into the lobby afterwards. We've gathered some confidence that
Chinese audiences like us. Maybe Beijing is another matter - we'll know soon enough.

May: debut in Shanghai

It happened again! Our concert in Shanghai with The Shanghai Quartet was greeted with clapping and yelling and general carrying on! Clearly a music loving audience who responded very enthusiastically to everything, notably Chen Yi's "From the Path of Beauty" commissioned by us and The Shanghai Quartet, and premiered last year.

The Shanghai Concert Hall, built in l930, was moved - yes, the whole building moved by elevating it and putting it on rollers and rolling it centimeters at a time for a year and a half until it was 100 metres away, and clear of the new highway...
Beautiful concert hall- good thing they saved it!

We started rehearsal with a review of our Chinese pronunciation in the Chen Yi folk song arrangements which we're singing on this tour. Professor/Baritone Zheng Zhou of the Shanghai Conservatory ( and formerly of the San Francisco Opera) came and helped us.

Then we had a happy reunion with the quartet which had flown in yesterday from New Jersey where they live. The last time we performed together was in Kansas City a few months ago. Violinist Weigang Li - then a student at the Shanghai Conservatory-was one of the first young Chinese musicians to go out from China in 1979. He came to San Francisco where he discovered music for string quartet, went home and founded The Shanghai Quartet, now 30 years old - the same as us. We were brought together by composer Chen Yi who was Chanticleer's composer in residence not long after she came to the US from China in the early l990's. We asked Chen Yi to write for the unusual combination of string quartet and vocal ensemble - "From the Path of Beauty, " on tonight's program, is the result.

Fans waited for us, just like at home.


After the concert we joined the patrons who have travelled to China to see us ( and, of course, China) for supper at the Yung Foo Elite Club. Formerly the British Embassy, this beautiful building in the French concession has been restored into a dining club in the style of Shanghai in the 20's.

May: Suzhou - our debut in China

After a day of taking in all the sensations of Shanghai (including of course many fascinating culinary things) we set out bravely to present our particular version of ensemble vocal music to a mainland Chinese audience for the first time. The Kings Singers have been here, but only in Shanghai and Beijing, and with a different kind of program than ours. Our first performance was in Suzhou, now a business-industrial area housing many high-tech firms. The old part of Suzhou is the site of the most famous Chinese classical garden which, according to the schedule, we might have a few hours to see.
What recently took 4 hours over a bumpy road alongside rice paddies, now takes 3 hours on this highway including an hour at a standstill. We arrived in Suzhou about an hour later than predicted.

We arrive for lunch at the theater, then depart for the old part of Suzhou and our hotel - it having been determined that it would be better to stay in Suzhou rather than go back to Shanghai late at night.
As it turned out there was a mixup at the hotel and we had no rooms. We decided that we would go on back to Shanghai after the concert after all. We turned around and went back to the theater to wait for rehearsal time.
Having been within spitting distance of the tea house in the ancient Chinese garden, we now found ourselves at the Starbucks on the lake in back of the theater. The day was lovely, the lake was lovely, so for a few hours we joined the many people were out enjoying the national holiday.

The Grand Theater, opened in 2007, houses a concert hall-opera house, an Imax and a dinner theater. The opera-concert stage is huge, with wing space the San Francisco Opera might envy. There are about 1200 seats, so as we rehearsed we wondered how many people would come to hear an unknown group of Americans practicing an art little known as yet in China.

Jace is nervously taking on the task of greeting the audience in Chinese, in each case pronouncing 'hello' in the local accent. Here he works on the Suzhou nuance with Catherine who is guiding us around. (by the way, he did really well, and there'll be no stopping him now!)

As we launched into the Stephen Foster songs with which we started the program, and looked out into the house, it felt a bit lonely - except of course for the guy with the video camera roaming around turning his lights on the audience .... People arrived in dribs and drabs during the first half, so that by intermission it was a good looking house! The Chinese invented super titles thousands of years ago - now they're electronic, and it's good to know that the audience knows what we're singing.

It is well known that audiences in China are not prone to silence during performances, so it was a little eery to see them very still and very attentive, many sitting forward on the edge of their seats - equally for all of the many kinds of music we presented - from Mexican Baroque, to shape note singing, to folk, jazz gospel and contemporary - you know, what we do. Even the many very small children present were quiet - except for one not inappropriate intervention during Brent Michael Davids' Night Chant. They came back after intermission, so we figured it must be going OK. Then the atmosphere became warmer and warmer and somewhere in the middle of the second half, people being shouting their approval. Amazing. As we seemed to be leaving for good after our first encore ( an arrangement by Chen Yi of a Chinese folk song), there was a shout which sounded like "No," so we came back out and sang Molihua - another Chinese folk tune. Of course the titles had already announced the encores, nevertheless we really felt that the audience didn't want to let us go.