“My origins and upbringing are a hybrid of East and West…”
As a soloist, I work with the traditions of a classical zheng repertoire and a wide range of contemporary works: from the ancient Han tunes and guqin adaptations to modern compositions of the 50s-90s.
Trained in classical piano, I have also discovered the avant-garde zheng, a new genre that explores atonality and the difficulty of sound. Music becomes more than a classical expression of harmony, style, and form. I am interested in the purity and expressiveness of a tone, and how each tone, in its different shades, communicates.
Performing at age 11
In his Poétique musicale (1952), Stravinsky wrote, "True tradition is not the documentation of a closed past; it is a living force which stimulates and teaches the present." My origins and upbringing are a hybrid of East and West, past and present. I seek not only to blend differences but also to demarcate creative gaps and distance. I play a traditional Zhejiang tune on my zheng, punctuate it with Bach's counterpoint, in search of a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary artistic journey.
Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Sept 28, 2006 - Paris
Read her biography | en français