The following is a summary of the interview
△ Zhang Weiliang
Dressed in black T-shirt jeans, black backpack, wearing a black duck-tongue hat and sunglasses, Zhang Weiliang's appearance is not the same as I imagined.
Zhang Weiliang is a flute player and composer. Born in Suzhou in 1957, he began learning to play at the age of 8. He was one of the first students to enter the Central Conservatory of Music after the resumption of the college entrance examination in 1977, and is also one of the important symbols of Chinese flute music culture in the international music scene.
As early as 1986, Zhang Weiliang recorded China's first laser record "The World of Zhen", and adapted the ancient songs "Qiujiang Night Berth" and "Plum Blossom Three Alleys", which became classics and were widely circulated. At the same time, he entered the eyes of famous directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, and served as a soloist in the movies "Ju Dou", "The Red Lantern Hangs High" and "Farewell to the Overlord". At the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, he also composed the score and flute performance of the large-scale group performance "Nature".
△ June 25, 2021 Suzhou Bay Grand Theater Zhang Weiliang's "Dreamland" solo concert
This year, Zhang Weiliang's 50th anniversary solo concert "Dreamland" toured many places across the country. The last show of the tour was in his hometown of Suzhou, where we followed him.
△ Zhang Weiliang guides "Suzhou Bay" for young performers
"Suzhou Bay", which is being rehearsed, was specially composed by Zhang Weiliang for this concert in his hometown, adapted from his first song "Taihu Spring" in 1981. This time, Zhang Weiliang will bring 60 young performers and students to perform together on the stage of the Suzhou Bay Grand Theater on the shores of Taihu Lake.
Zhang Weiliang: From 1971 to 1977, I traveled to every township in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Every time I went to a place, I learned from the locals such as Suzhou Pingtan, Shanghai Shanghai Opera, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Yue Opera, Wuxi Tin Opera, including Kunqu Opera. Most of the elements of all my current creations are born out of these ancient music. For me, the mother tongue of music, I think it is necessary to give back to the mother tongue that I am most familiar with.
Tagawa: When was the first time you listened to the flute? How did it appeal to you?
Zhang Weiliang: In the 1960s, there were many restrictions, when our culture and art were relatively scarce, and there were not too many things that could be expressed. My father said that children should learn the same technique and have a craft. We had four children, the eldest brother was more than a teenager, he was already in college and became a teacher, the second brother was a carpenter, and the older sister was a tailor. I asked my dad, do I learn to play the flute? He said why did he learn to play the flute? I said the flute sounded good, and it was short, so I put it in my bag and blew it during school breaks.
Tagawa: I heard a story about you sharing your studies and worshippers. You say that you took a small maza and took a 12-hour boat from Suzhou to Hangzhou. Because it's too early, you walk to the teacher's house, one because the time is just right, and you can also save some money, plus three cents to eat a bowl of noodles.
Zhang Weiliang: Yes, that was after 1972. Mr. Zhao Songting, a Chinese flute master, not only taught me the flute, but he also told me to understand thirteen courses such as literature and history philosophy, mathematics, physics and chemistry, law, acoustics, archaeology, etc., which are all related to playing the flute. You can't just play the flute, just an entertainer you can't blow very well. In fact, at that time, I couldn't fully understand it, because it was too profound. The years when I was lucky to study with Mr. Zhao Songting were very important, it was my embryonic era. After he finishes speaking, you will not forget. I am also a teacher now, and I have been teaching at the university for forty years, and I think that there are not only thirteen courses, but also twenty-three courses. I often tell music students that it is not far to go without a background. Learn to read books and think about problems, including observing society.
△ Zhang Weiliang prepares for the performance
There are still 4 hours before the performance, and the lighting of the theater has not been able to reach the effect that Zhang Weiliang intended. In addition to rehearsing all the tracks, he had to personally confirm the location of the live sound, the placement of the score, the host and the position of the actors, etc. Zhang Weiliang said that this is the "standard" of professional performance.
Tagawa: How long did you rehearse this afternoon?
Zhang Weiliang: Two or three hours.
Tagawa: I watched the rehearsal video sent to me by the choreographer, and the on-site scheduling was done by yourself, is this the case every time?
Zhang Weiliang: I like to close the seams, the music played is national, but the rules should be international, all the same.
△ Zhang Weiliang's "Dreamland" concert
Zhang Weiliang: As a person engaged in music, how should we think about the development or innovation of music? If there is no originality, no innovation, it is equivalent to eating only one dish in our lifetime, and that dish is not good.
When listening to folk music, everyone should understand it for themselves. In the second half of the 20th century, there were a lot of special Chinese title music, all of which were all innuendos to make you look for that thing, and there was no one in the music. For example, in "Dreamland", the thumping and thud you hear with your eyes half closed is equivalent to the sound of your heart. After an hour or two of listening, you think it's the best break I had today, and that's what the music does.
Zhang Weiliang: "Le Chun" is a Western orchestra and flute ensemble repertoire, using Northeast folk songs.
Tagawa: I love this piece. You told me before that there are elements of song in the song, and when I listened to it, I wondered if it was my mother tongue of music, but my root. Maybe I don't know, but I was born in the northeast after all, so this element may be in my blood. The moment I heard this piece, I reflected on myself, what is the relationship between me and my hometown, and my hometown music. It may have been nourishing us, but we don't realize it.
Zhang Weiliang: Human beings cannot do without music. Some music is meaningful, and some are meaningless. Without music in life, society could immediately become very indifferent. Therefore, music is to be listened to carefully by people, and people communicate with each other through music. Society is getting faster and faster, and everyone is busy, but I would like to suggest that you can listen to music when you get home. I have many friends, whether Western, European, or Chinese, and I noticed that they had not yet taken off their trench coats and changed their shoes when they came home, and they turned on the music first.
Tagawa: What do they listen to? Is it more Western music, classical music?
Zhang Weiliang: I used to listen to Western music, and now I listen to my music. I told my Western friends that Chinese music you can listen to and try. He said, "I think to listen to Chinese music, I want to brew a cup of green tea that Professor Zhang gave me."
Tagawa: There was a lot of Western culture pouring into China in the early 1980s, and it was at that time that you were exposed to a lot of Western music and instruments, do you wonder or question your own instruments?
Zhang Weiliang: Yes, I have questioned it. I can also play the flute, but I still think the bamboo flute is more beautiful because it is more Chinese people's hearts. But we have a lot of content missing, such as not having a complete theory, how to analyze a work, how to look at the performance of musical works... None of that.
After entering the conservatory, I began to be exposed to Western music, and I think it is really perfect. At that time, when the dormitory was divided, the Folk Music Department had no place, so I was assigned to the Composition Department dormitory. There was a broken piano in the dormitory, and the composer Cao Jiayun was my old classmate, and he came up and played a "Yellow River Piano Concerto" directly, which scared me silly.
Tagawa: So grand.
Zhang Weiliang: Yes, I didn't even see the piano at that time. We were bunk beds, and after he finished playing I said, "Can you play it again?" Play it again as I stand and watch." That kind of excitement and impulsiveness, I think there are so fewer children now, I feel that they don't care about anything when they see it.
Tagawa: Because there are so many things that can be seen now, and it is too easy.
Zhang Weiliang: It's too easy, and this is also the problem that we have to solve in education today. Every era has something that can shock you in every era, and the most terrible thing is that what shocks you is "showmanship", which is numb to our progressive and innovative things, and we do not look at it or pay attention to it. So now invite me to give a lecture or lecture, I am very concerned that the children must pay attention to innovative, developmental content. Don't feel like you've mastered a little bit and started to appreciate yourself, the frog at the bottom of the well is not OK. I also study composition, I don't reject Western music, I feel like I have to study Western music, learn Western music. In this way, the means to learn Western music are shared by human beings.
This year, Zhang Weiliang originally planned to tour with German musician Rainer to integrate Chinese folk music and jazz music, but because of the global new crown epidemic, the plan was shelved, but the music did not stop. On both ends of the globe, they still think and communicate about music every day.
"Friends" is the first work that Zhang Weiliang and Heina Granchin (de) rainer granzin co-completed, Zhang Weiliang said that after the completion of the sample of the work, he shared with many friends, everyone liked it, at the moment when the global epidemic was isolated from each other, fortunately, "Friends" brought us closer to us, giving us greetings and warmth.
Tagawa: Let's take "Friends" as an example, how did you integrate the elements of world music into national instruments while retaining the essence of national instruments?
Zhang Weiliang: Jazz itself is cosmopolitan and international. Modern music, folk music, traditional music, through jazz to give birth to a lot of musical possibilities. Rainer loves Chinese music very much and we have built a friendship through music. I also hope that when the epidemic subsides, we can work with foreign musicians on the stage in China and on the stage in Germany to express the fusion of Eastern and Western instruments. The flute, flute, gong, erhu, pipa and other instruments in Chinese national instruments are combined and displayed to everyone.
Zhang Weiliang (right) and Heina Grynchchen (de) rainer granzin connect for ensemble
"The bamboo flute is small, the world is very big", is a mantra of Zhang Weiliang. How do traditional and modern meet? How to think and create Chinese folk music in an international language, so that the world can understand China? It is something that Zhang Weiliang has been doing for decades. He does not reject anything new, and when it comes to creation, innovation, challenge and possibility, the 64-year-old Zhang Weiliang still maintains the same enthusiasm and momentum as young people.
Zhang Weiliang: There are too few works about the Chinese national instrument flute, and we can't stop at nostalgia to enjoy it. What is Chinese music today, what is Chinese art? That's a problem. You have to keep creating. If you don't create, don't you still stop there? I told the students, "It's better to be slow than fast, and it's better to be slow than to stand." ”
Now there are two poles, some people think that the sooner the better, some people stand there and see which one is not OK, "That is too difficult, forget it." "Some people are self-righteous, think they're already pretty good, and just stand there and don't move. So we should go out and see if we're really good. Don't stop there, go outside and see, the outside world can be wonderful.
△ Zhang Weiliang (left) and Zhang Yimou (right)
Zhang Weiliang: After working with Zhang Yimou on the movie "Ju Dou", I went to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. People are engaged in film professionals, you don't look at the scene is Chinese, the actor is Chinese, and the words you speak are also Chinese, but all the shot scheduling, color temperature application, and scene arrangement are the most cutting-edge and modern means of Western European research, so I immediately went to absorb it. People pay so much attention to your culture and art, have we paid attention to others? Just going to see a hilarity is boring. Without technology and means, how are you going to represent your content? My flute, our national instrument, I have always developed with an open mind. If a national musical instrument does not adopt an open posture, it will slowly die out.
△ Zhang Weiliang Flute Album "Heavenly Illusion Flute"
From 1985 to 1995, Zhang Weiliang cooperated with the French Electronic Music Laboratory to combine flute flutes with electronic music to create the album "Heavenly Illusion Flute", which is known as a "new age work with great oriental charm"; since 1995, he has cooperated with composers Chen Qigang, Ye Cong and others to perform in vienna's Musikverein and Carnegie Hall, and performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, opening up various attempts and explorations to promote Chinese folk music to the world.
Tagawa: You said that when you first went abroad, people probably paid attention to our skin, our appearance, our clothing, and it seemed that it was difficult to understand our music. In your performance experience for so many years, have you ever experienced a change process in which the audience went from not understanding to understanding, and then even to loving and pursuing?
Zhang Weiliang: When we first went to Europe, they were divided into two categories, one was hunting, and they felt that such a thing could make such an interesting sound, and the other was different. In 1997, he toured the United States and went to 22 cities in 28 days, performing half traditional music and half modern music. After performing in Dallas, Texas, a university professor said that the instrument was a natural sound from the far East. Western instruments have the shortcomings of Western instruments, they lack personality. Chinese musical instruments also have their own shortcomings and lack commonalities. After the two are integrated, the personality of the Chinese instrument is highlighted and beautiful.
△ Xukou Central Elementary School Zhang Weiliang Hall Zhang Weiliang (left) displays a jade flute for Tian Chuan
Zhang Weiliang: I often work with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and their music director, David Walton, tells me, "I understand your music completely." "Because he said he had listened to Chinese music for decades, he couldn't understand it.
Tagawa: What do you not understand? Why did he understand your music?
Zhang Weiliang: Our music absorbs contemporary music. Music should be used to express human thoughts, to have humanistic feelings, real humanistic feelings, can not let music become a shell. Chinese music should think about two aspects, on the one hand, to study ancient Chinese music, whether from theory or performance, and on the other hand, to study international contemporary music.
Tian Chuan: At this stage, Chinese creators in various fields, including architecture, music, and especially national instrumentalists, are trying to find China's contemporary language. But what it is, everyone may still be groping and practicing.
Zhang Weiliang: Personally, how much can I push forward, it is impossible for me to stand where I am. I also hope that more musicians engaged in national instruments can share our wonderful musical wealth with the world with a greater degree of openness.
Choreographer: Li Han
Edits: 612