Far East meets West Coast

By Kristina Chiapella

On Friday, Feb. 9, the Center of Performing Arts will feature Melody of China, a San Francisco-based music group that has made a distinctive mark on the Bay Area. The group, formed in 1993, includes professional musicians who have studied music since childhood and some who have studied at prestigious music conservatories in China.

Hong Wang, the artistic director, co-leader and multi-instrumentalist of the group, began studying music when he was seven years old. With a librarian mother and engineer father, Wang's pursuit of music led him down a different path. Wang founded Melody of China when he immigrated to San Francisco in 1993, and the group experienced quick success due to their top-level musicians and the fact that few Chinese music groups could be found in the Bay Area at the time.

Melody of China, Wang explained, is not your average Chinese music group. "We want to give people different images of music, not just traditional," he said. He emphasized that MOC provides a unique concert experience in that they play contemporary music and experimental music, rather than strictly classical.

Due to funding restrictions, Melody of China doesn't usually have the chance to perform in the South Bay Area, and Wang said that the group is looking forward to playing at Santa Clara. Classical Chinese music will be featured, as well as a few short educational segments and new works.

Education is an important aspect for the group, which spends time touring schools as part of educational contracts with nonprofit organizations such as Young Audiences of the Bay Area, The Los Angeles Music Center and the San Francisco Symphony's Educational Division.

Wang said that it's often hard for people to understand each other across cultural barriers. "We want to build a bridge between the Chinese community and our community," he says. "It's good for the next generation to learn about different cultures."

The group has experienced a good share of publicity over the past years. They were the first group invited by the San Francisco Symphony to play in the Chinese New Year Celebration, a concert with the purpose of promoting different cultures and connecting with the Chinese community. Each year, Wang produces a different kind of program for the group's annual concert in San Francisco, with the goal of bringing the audience to see music in a different light. "The idea is to create new music," he said.

And by no means is MOC a strictly local group. Wang has traveled to New York to record a CD for Sony Classical, now used in over 65 countries, and the group has also performed for Shanghai Broadcasting. In 2000 the group played overseas for their biggest audience to date, at a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic for over 26,000 people.

Accompanying the Melody of China performance will be an exhibit of Chinese brush work by Jack Tak Fok Ling, associate dean of the college of arts and sciences and executive director of the Center for Multicultural Learning.

Ling began painting at age six as part of the Literati tradition, which has influenced the cultures of dynastic and modern China for over 900 years.

Emphasizing an education of calligraphy, poetry, literature, painting and music, the training helped Ling maintain a connection to his Chinese heritage. "When I brush my poetry and landscapes," Ling said, "I feel whole, balanced and at peace."

Explaining the value of Chinese music, Ling said that it draws from many aspects of art and "complements other expressions of the human condition."

For the university, he said, "a spot of Chinese art can bring a different ray of light into its institutional soul. Maybe, a moment of 'Chinese Arts' can take many of us away from the familiar and connect with the beauty of the other."

The show is at 8 p.m. in the Music and Dance Facility Recital Hall, and student tickets are $5.

Contact Kristina Chiapella at (408) 551-1918 or kchiapella@scu.edu.