Hao Jiang Tian Teaching Young Singers Chinese Opera

Master (right) and student (left) discussing
Mandarin Chinese for the "I Sing Beijing" project.

"When Hao Jiang Tian was a teenager, growing up in a China wrecked by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, his prospects were not bright. His parents had been sent away for re-education and he was living alone. At 15, he was forced to leave school and work in a factory making electric boilers. But a chance encounter changed his life, beginning a chain of events that turned him into one of the world's top opera singers. Now living in the US, the 57-year-old is back in China with a group of young performers to teach them how to sing Chinese opera. It is his attempt to bridge the gap between two very different countries that will largely shape the world this century." [Source]

Read the full interview here.

Chinese Politics Matter in Music

Chinese bass Hao Jiang Tian

"Lang Lang's choice of music for a state dinner in the US was both lauded and chided, although it has evolved to be another folk song about love of country. Depending on your view, pianist Lang Lang either pulled off a sucker punch or committed a diplomatic faux pas last week. He played a tune from a movie that has anti-American subject matter at the Jan. 19 state banquet US President Barack Obama gave to the visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao. Even though it did not evolve into a diplomatic skirmish, it created some hoopla on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. As a student, before the bass singer Hao Jiang Tian became famous at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, he used to moonlight