This Beijing Prodigy Will Get You Grooving to the Guzheng

Guzheng Prodigy Yu Miao Shirks Tradition, Pushes the Ancient Instrument Into New Territory

Kyle Mullin | Mar 18, 2019 6:03 pm | Add a comment | 756 reads

Think the guzheng is a stuffy instrument only played by old masters for old people? You're sure to have your mind changed by Yu Miao. As Miao rightly points out: "The guitar has a much longer history than most Chinese instruments! But people don’t think of it as old."

She concedes, however, that the guzheng has gotten short shrift because it is mostly "played in China, so not many foreigners know about it, and tend to just categorize it with classical music that they might assume is inaccessible."

The hotshot Beijing native not only studied the guzheng – considered a staple of classical Chinese music – at the prestigious China Conservatory of Music, she pushes its sounds to new, modern heights, performing alongside some of China's top electronica producers. Audiences will have the chance to experience such at her DDC show on Mar 23.

Yu began to see the 21-stringed instrument in a new light during a recording session with American flutist Bruce Gremo. When he asked her to try improvising or playing a piece of her own, Yu was taken aback. “Most traditional musicians in China don’t know how to compose pieces themselves, or play freestyle,” she explains.

Regardless, Yu began plucking away, and before long those reverberating notes lead to a revelation. “It was like saying what you want to say, through music,” she recalls of that liberating session, which was so enjoyable that she formed an avant-garde jazz group with the flutist. From there she began playing and collaborating with a wide array of other musicians, including hotly-buzzed Beijing techno producer Shao, and his partner Wang Meng. Wang in turn creates dazzling visuals at various musicians’ concerts, and who will appear alongside Yu for their eclectic, techno-meets-tradition performance at DDC next week.

It’s a long way to come for Yu. After all, she can still recall squeezing onto a bicycle with her mother as a six-year-old in 1997 and zipping through Beijing’s hutongs, bound for her guzheng teacher’s home. Those lessons cost around RMB 50, a hefty sum at the time that would prompt her mother to gently, but firmly, push Yu to practice hard.

Her current deftness with the instrument, and eventual acceptance into Beijing’s prestigious China Conservatory of Music, all would've been beyond her wildest dreams as a six-year-old novice. An equally unlikely outcome: winning over cynical, classical music-averse artists like Wang Meng, who will helm the synthesizer and coordinate the accompanying visuals at the DDC show next week.

"I didn't know much about traditional music myself, and never liked it," Wang says of his mindset prior to working with Yu. However, he says, “In her hands, the guzheng is just a musical instrument used for self-expression," as opposed to a hallmark of a bygone, off-putting genre. He adds: "We don’t write music together, we improvise. And whenever I see her playing, it’s as if God manipulates her hand. It's the most emotional kind of artistic creation."

Yu can’t wait to share that sentiment with the DDC crowd, saying she expects the show will “be like a party, where people will talk and enjoy the music, and have a relaxed night.” But for her, sat behind one of China's most ancient instruments, playing will be the same as always – it'll be all about “talking through music.”