Declared sister cities in 1980, San Francisco and Shanghai have been celebrating that relationship all year, starting in February with a spectacular gala and exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in the former city’s Civic Center. In musical mode, there’ll be an East Meets West Chamber Concert at the Museum on July 10, featuring the American premiere of Joan Huang’s Shanghai Trilogy, performed by the Bridge Chamber Virtuosi.
The locally based ensemble’s name, notes expatriate violist Yun Jie Liu, signals its mission: to sound a connection between the musical traditions of Asia and the West. Its repertoire embraces Beethoven, Schubert, and Dohyanni, as well as a variety of contemporary Asian composers. But China has not always been accepting of Western culture, and Huang — like Liu a Shanghai native — ran into some not-unexpected road blocks before the world premiere of her new composition in her hometown on June 19.
Her Trilogy recounts the city’s recent history in three sections, beginning with its cosmopolitan, artistically active ethos in the 1930s and ’40s and finishing with its current status as a modernistic, world-welcoming Pudong (Little Manhattan). It’s the Trilogy’s middle section, evoking the first few decades after Mao established Communist China in 1949, that made entrenched party officials nervous earlier this month.
Although the Trilogy was created for the Virtuosi trio, Liu and cellist Amos Yang were bound stateside by their duties with the San Francisco Symphony and couldn’t attend the premiere. Violinist Wei He, who teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory, was able to go, and he provided Liu a phoned account of the proceedings. Liu points out that Trilogy makes use of projected slides, as well as music. As recounted by He to Liu, the Chinese Communists, who had their functionaries witness the piece before its performance, “don’t like to show any pictures about the Cultural Revolution; they try to cover it up. Especially during the gala dinner, when all the politicians from the U.S. were there. They would not feel comfortable to mention that dark period,” when Western classical music was violently repressed. “So they had to just do the music without the slides.”
On this side of the Pacific, the multimedia presentation will proceed in its entirety, as Huang intended, with the Los Angeles–based composer in attendance and addressing the audience. In addition to the slides and the string trio, the Trilogy will feature the pipa (played by ShenShen Zhang), percussion (by Raymond Froelich), and electronic effects (by Huang). “It’s a fascinating piece, because Joan uses a lot of melodies that were part of our history,” says Liu. “Some are folk songs. For the people that grew up around Shanghai, it will be very special, because Shanghai has its own opera, different from Peking opera, and our own dialect.”
The July 10 program will be filled out by two other pieces by expatriate Chinese composers: Gobi Gloria, originally set for string quartet by Lei Liang, a professor at UC San Diego, and Seven Tunes Heard in China, a lauded solo cello piece by Bright Sheng. Headquartered at the Asian Art Museum, the Shanghai Celebration will continue with exhibitions of visual arts, a film series, and an October performance by the Shanghai String Quartet. For details, check out the Web site.