Shanghai Daily news

The sensational success of Beautiful Energy (also known as 12-Girl Band) has brightened hopes among academics that Chinese traditional music has the potential to become mainstream worldwide. However, it also raises the question of whether the ancient music would be able to thrive without sexy young women performing it.
Some of the country's leading traditional musicians say that using sex to promote the music is a big no-no. The musicians are now preparing for a grand get-together concert and they are vowing to present only the pure charm of Chinese traditional music. The concert, entitled as ``The Soul and Charm of Chinese Music,'' is one of the only two traditional music concerts on the program list of the ongoing Sixth Shanghai International Arts Festival.
The concert will include 12 classical Chinese works played on a total of eight different traditional musical instruments and presented by some of the best interpreters of classical Chinese music in the country. Among them are some Shanghai natives including pipa (lute) maestro Liu Dehai and renowned guqin (seven-stringed zither) musician Gong Yi.
Concert producer and director Xiao Yu knew from the outset that a folk concert would not be a hot item in today's entertainment market but the 50-year-old says she doesn't care about making a loss if the concert can re-awake the audience's interest in traditional music.
``We see many composers and musicians make so-called `innovative' approaches to cater to modern society. But before we attempt to break away from tradition, shouldn't we take a look back and ask ourselves if we are going in the right direction when `reforming' traditional music,'' Xiao says.
To share her concerns with her fellow musicians, the concert program has some of the most classic and well-known works in Chinese traditional music including ``Eighteen Airs for the Fife,'' ``Ambuscade from Ten Sides'' and ``A Hundred Birds Worship the Phoenix.''
Each solo item will be backdropped by the scroll of a famous calligraphers or by multimedia displays of the regional scenery from which the music or the instrument originated.
The 67-year-old Liu, on acknowledging the producer's invitation, wrote a poem to express his excitement, saying that ``He will recollect for people in my hometown the memory of the soul and charm of Chinese traditional music.''

Date: October 26, 7:15pm
Venue: Shanghai Grand Theater, 300 People's Ave
Tickets: 80-680 yuan
Tel: 6227-8366, 6272-0455