ERGO

New music for piano & Chinese folk instruments

Zhen Chen

 

OVERVIEW

 

With his Navona debut ERGO, pianist and composer Zhen Chen makes an impressive contribution to the decades-long legacy of composers blending Chinese and western instruments and musical materials.

 

This musical trend can be traced back 20 years, when a potent generation of Chinese and Taiwanese composers who began to explode across American and European concert stages. Luminary composers like Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long paved the way for younger Chinese artists like Zhen Chen, who uses ERGO to continue this blend of his native musical culture with many parts of the Western musical tradition.

 

ERGO places piano alongside two of the most familiar traditional Chinese instruments to Western audiences: the pipa – a kind of Chinese lute – and the erhu – a bowed Chinese string instrument. Chen’s use of spacious piano accompaniments and straightforward and expressive melodies makes this combination sound natural while retaining its unique charm.

 

While the album’s compositions don’t directly draw from Chinese folk tunes, Chen does an excellent job of creating musical contexts that suit the piano, pipa, and/or erhu, as well as his typically naturalistic subject matter. The titles of many of the composer’s pieces describe a landscape, which he, accordingly, seems to illustrate with his music.

 

These pieces – such as Stroll by the Lake, Springfield, and others – are composed with clear forms that proceed with a gentle, rhythmically consistent piano accompaniment, from which a tender, sometimes plaintive, melody will emerge and develop in one or more solo instruments.

 

Chen’s melodies and textures play to the strengths of his instrumental forces, and he demonstrates keen awareness of their coloristic similarities and differences. Moreover, his harmonic language tends towards pentatonic and natural minor scales, though the song Plum Blossom Chant, for voice and piano, beautifully mixes different forms of the minor scale.

 

Two works on ERGO stand out in their style, rhythmic intensity, and playfulness: Turpan Tango and Dance Floor Banter. These pieces are based on Western dances – the tango and waltz, respectively – with Turpan Tango most notably departing from the album’s overall contemplative character for a more raucous mood. With this said, Chen’s earnestness, which abounds in his inward-looking music, remains a driving factor in these two dance pieces, and helps connect them with ERGO’s other works.

 

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HIGHLIGHTS

 

Composer and pianist Zhen Chen follows a decades-long tradition among American and European composers of blending traditional Chinese and western instruments

 

While Chen’s piano-focused music is typically gentle and contemplative, he shows a more playful side in the dance-inspired works Turpan Tango and Dance Floor Banter

 

ERGO includes performances from two traditional Chinese string instruments. The erhu, often referred to as a “spike fiddle,” is a two-stringed bowed instrument with a versatile, calming sound. The pipa, one of the most popular Chinese instruments, is a four-stringed plucked instrument. It was named with Chinese syllables based on how it’s played – “pí,” to strike outward with the right hand, and “pá,” to pluck inward towards the palm of the hand

 

Chen’s collaboration with violinist Shuai Shi on FAURÉ, SCHUMANN, BARTÓK Sonatas for Violin and Piano has been hailed by Fanfare Magazine as "a perfect balance" with “sheer beauty of tone, fluent and fluid playing, and emotional refinement.”

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ALSO ON NAVONA RECORDS

 

(NV5933) SCATTERING LIGHT, SCATTERING FLOWERS

MARTY REGAN

Release Date:  April 14, 2017

Catalog #: NV6089

 

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TRACK INFO

 

Zhen Chen composer, piano 

Jiaju Shen pipa

Feifei Yang erhu

Yixuan Pang voice

 

01 Jade (piano, pipa)

 

02 Springfield (piano, pipa, erhu)

 

03 Regret (piano, erhu)

 

04  Plum Blossom Chant (piano, voice)

 

05  Stroll By The Lake (piano, pipa, voice)

 

06 Turpan Tango (piano, pipa, erhu)

 

07  Dance Floor Banter (piano, pipa)

 

08 Longing (piano, erhu)

 

09  Lament (piano, voice)

 

10 Recollection (piano)

 

CREDITS

 

All tracks recorded June 2016 at Oktaven Audio in New York NY

 

Recording Engineer Ryan Streber

 

Cover Art Lan Zhenghui

“Reel” ink-painting on rice paper

 

Project Consultant Liang Pan

 

Executive Producer Bob Lord

Executive A&R Sam Renshaw

A&R Alex Bourne

Audio Director Jeff LeRoy

Engineering Manager Lucas Paquette

Art & Production Director Brett Picknell

Graphic Design Emily Roulo

Marketing Scott Murphy