Chinese art troupe brings exquisite folk music to US

About 2,000 audiences were treated Tuesday to an unforgettable performance of Chinese folk music in the downtown Davies Symphony Hall of San Francisco Symphony.

The two and half hour concert Enchanting China presented by the China Broadcasting Performing Arts Troupe (CBPAT) in the US west coast, captivated the audience with a host of classical Chinese folk musical pieces, such as Moonlight of the Spring River, Lovely Rose, Deep Night and many more.

Most of the musical pieces were performed with traditional Chinese stringed instruments such as the Erhu (a bowed instrument with a long neck, small oblong body and two strings), Pipa (a pear-shaped fretted instrument), as well as transverse and flutes of various sizes.

"This is our first time to come to San Francisco and we injected innovative elements into the concert," said Zhang Gaoxiang, general director of the concert, which was staged as part of the music tour of the CBPAT to US western coast cities of Los Angles and San Francisco in California, and Seattle in Washington state.

"We tried to blend Eastern music with (a) Western flavor in our rendition of the piece adapted from a famous Chinese folk song Flowers Thoughts," which was played by an American cellist and a Chinese soloist of Banhu (an ancient traditional Chinese stringed instrument), Zhang explained.

"The Chinese traditional folk music is warmly welcomed by local people, and our performances have created (an) unexpected responses from (the) mainstream American audience, who have a different artistic taste from Chinese music," said Liu Xuejun, head of the Chinese delegation of the CBPAT.

"It's a perfect performance that almost brought down the house. I can't speak Chinese but I can understand the music language," said an excited American university student in her 20s, who identified her only as Froster.