The summer academy program that brought high school students to perform in the US for the first time is part of the partnership that also includes the first undergraduate program for the erhu, guzheng and pipa in the US, a modern Chinese music festival every year at Bard and an annual scholarly conference on historical and contemporary aspects of Chinese music in the US.

"In the past few months, we've been recruiting students who want to come to Bard College for the five-year undergraduate conservatory program," Martin said. "Our undergraduate program is unusual because during the five years, the students get two degrees - one music bachelor degree and the other degree in liberal arts which can be literature, philosophy or biology.

"The new idea was to include Chinese instruments now as majors in the conservatory, so this year we started with four students - two guzheng and two erhu players," Martin said.

"Three of them come from China and one of the guzheng players is from Houston," he added. "We hope it will grow more students each year, more instruments, and that's really important because that's the real core of our program."

"Just as Western music started to gain popularity gradually in China four centuries ago, the goal of our initiatve is to promote the study, performance, and appreciation of music from contemporary China," said Cai Jindong, director of the US-China music institute at Bard and conductor of the BYCO.

"The summer academy is one of the steps we are taking, we hope Chinese music can take root and develop in the US through these exchange programs and our degree programs," Cai said.

The teachers at the summer academy are some of the best traditional Chinese music teachers from the CCOM, said Cai, including Yu Hongmei, dean of the Chinese music department at CCOM, and 10 other distinguished professors from the CCOM.

The students from China studied and rehearsed for two weeks on the Bard campus and had two concerts, one at Bard and one at Harvard University.

"This orchestra is at a way higher level than the other (traditional Chinese) orchestras in the US," said Suhasna Liyanaarachchi, an American student at New Brunswick High School in New Jersey who played the erhu with the youth orchestra. "I think I've improved a lot from participating in it."

Liyanaarachchi said she started to learn the erhu three years ago when she became fascinated by a YouTube video by professor Yu, the co-artistic director at the BYCO, playing the instrument.

"The first time I saw her in the same room with me, my heart started beating so fast," Liyanaarachchi added. "It's really difficult to find a good erhu teacher in the US, so I really cherish this opportunity"

"To perform in the US is very different from performing in China," said Xu Miao, a 16-year-old student at Central Conservatory of Music Affiliated High School who played the xhongruan at the BYCO.

Related

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)