Tsun Lok Xiao and Dizi Concert

On Sunday night I went to a concert of traditional music at the Hong Kong Cultural Center next to the Star Ferry terminal in TST.

The Tsun Lok Ensemble played traditional instruments notably the Xiao and Dizi chinese flutes.    The main soloists played 'xiao' (箫), chinese end-blown bamboo flutes that look similar to the Japanese shakuhachi but have more holes and a softer sound (link).  The ensemble seemed to be comprised of about 20 students mainly playing various sizes of 'dizi' (笛子), chinese transverse bamboo flutes (link).    Some pieces were accompanied by a lady playing a 'guzheng' (古箏) which is a chinese zither similar to the japanese koto (link).  

I had been looking forward to this concert and booked a seat in the front row a month ago so I could watch how the xiao are played.   Although the shakuhachi and xiao are descended from a common ancestor from southern China and look similar they are played differently.

The shakuhachi has just 5 holes and sharps & flat notes and microtones are played by changing the angle of the mouthpiece (a technique called meri) as well as partially covering the holes.  The xiao has 6 main holes plus 2-4 smaller holes (to play half-tones?),  the blowing edge is different, and the players don't seem to use meri.  The xiao has a softer sound and uses more fingering ornamentation.  Having said that the xiao and guzheng sounded a lot like Japanes shakuhachi and koto.

Anyway I enjoyed the concert very much.   I was the only gweilo and although the speaking and program notes were entirely in chinese I was pleasantly surprised how much I could follow leveraging my very limited knowledge of chinese characters.  

There was a nice variety of pieces which seem to be fairly contemporary.  5 of the 12 seemed to be  composed by the main solist (Mr 'something-something-stonehead', on the left in the photo above), another by a young woman who was in the audience, and some of the others seemed to be from the 1930s. 

The pieces were played as an orchestra, duets, quartets or trios.   They made nice use of slides and video images as background to the playing.   In piece #11, spring-red-flower-moon-evening, Mr Stonehead even painted a large chinese landscape painting in the background as the piece was played. 

The climax was piece #12 was 'something-something-alcohol' (將進酒) where Mr Stonehead played dong xiao  (洞簫) and recited a poem by Li Bai (李白) accompanied by the dizi ensemble.  I didn't know this poem but it was obviously an ode to drinking (酒) and came off very well.

I was intrigued that the images projected during the pieces were very much of Hong Kong rather than the 'traditional' images of 'China' that I might have expected if they had been playing chinese classics.   So it seemed to me very much a performance  of living local culture rather than mainland / imperial China.

I couldn't find much about the ensemble (in english) on the internet and got the impression they were from a music school or university and that Mr Stonehead and the other xiao solist were their teachers.   If so they did very well.

Finally, further to my observations about locals wearing the union jack, I was amused to note that that the person sitting to my left wore bold stars-and-stripes leggings, and the person sitting to my right had a stars-and-stripes i-pad cover.