The Road of Sonic Voyage

Abstract

“The Road of Sonic Voyage” was a multi-faceted intercultural music research project held over 22-26 May 2019. It focused on a visit of Professor Zhang Qiang, pipa virtuoso at the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, who travelled to Sydney on a CSC Short-term visitor grant. The project aimed to challenge traditional perceptions of the pipa and expand the sonic possibilities of the instrument. The highlight of the project was a public concert featuring Zhang Qiang, myself, and Sydney Conservatorium of Music (SCM) students, featuring world premieres of three new works by SCM staff (Damien Ricketson, Ivan Zavada) and alumni (Rory Knott), interspersed with performance of ancient works from the pipa canon. These new compositions challenged the boundaries of the traditional concept of the pipa and the sounds that listeners expect pipa performers to produce.

This research addresses a gap in understanding by exploring the evolving role of the pipa in contemporary music and its cultural significance. The collaboration between Professor Zhang Qiang, myself, and SCM colleagues and students exemplified the dynamic interplay between tradition and innovation in pipa music.

The project emerged directly from my doctoral research on the recent development of the pipa (completed Dec 2019), and which reconnected me with Professor Zhang Qiang, who was one of my former pipa teachers. He is one of the nine key figures I consider within my study to have been influential in the development of the instrument and its music since the early twentieth century. My fieldwork in Beijing involved formal interviews and informal discussions with him in 2011, 2016 and 2018. In early 2018 that I proposed the idea of a concert with Zhang Qiang in Sydney and he agreed. I may have had many lessons with him previously as his student, but this was our first time to perform together on stage. Tuning the pipa for students before a concert is a common scene backstage in China, as a teacher myself nowadays living in Australia, I cannot even remember the last time my pipa was tuned by somebody else. Yet at the concert professor Zhang didn’t hesitate to tune my pipa during the rehearsals and before the concert, this warmth took me straight back to my student years. This is one of the many subtleties alive within the tradition of the teacher-student music teaching relationship. One which I believe is crucial as it provides strength, comfort, and sensitivity beyond the music. The concert reflects on a musical relationship: the teacher-student relationship.