Various Artists - The Art of the Chinese Harp - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Rich Conaty, host of the Big Broadcast (WFUV-FM, New York), brings US 25 more rarities, many new to CD! a 16-page booklet joins Where the Cot-Cot-Cotton Grows Cook Sisters; Fate Scranton Sirens; a Bee in Your Boudoir Charles InchBuddyInch Rogers; Trouble in Mind Four Southerners; Spring Is Here Again Marion Harris, and more jazz, dance-band and vocal gems.

Navona Records presents European/American composer Svjetlana Bukvich's latest masterpiece EXTENSION, a multifaceted collection of pieces that use technology, music, and the motions of dance to both deconstruct and reimagine ideas of genre and cultural division. In EXTENSION, listeners traverse ten innovative pieces that are both deeply personal and universal. Bukvich describes herself as aiming for a Inchno-genre-borderless-flowInch with her music and, on a larger scale, in the structures of human society. Indeed, she captures that spirit immensely hybridizing musical languages from American minimalism, art and progressive rock, and German classicism, to Italian polyphony, Russian romanticism, jazz, and ethnic idioms, she creates a cinematic, 'fictocritical' sound that is entirely unique but at once familiar. From the opening whispers of the electric violin in The Beginning to the evocative title track Extension which mingles both voice and synth, the album is a sweeping conversation between the natural and technological, the language of sound and the language of numbers. The piece Once You Are Not a Stranger appears in three iterations instrumentally, vocally, and as an orchestral reprise. The meditative return of the piece emphasizes the expression of it's title - in the acceptance of profound loss and the redemptive possibilities that extend out of it, there is no division, and no one is a stranger. The composer herself knows the world's need for connection all too well - her past includes an escape from her home in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina in the midst of the Civil War before finding her way to America where she continued her pursuits in media arts. In her youth Bukvich has lived in Ethiopia and Scotland, experiences which also influenced her sonic ideas. EXTENSION offers an opportunity for reconnection through dismantling, rebuilding, and exploring concept

This album features three types of the most popular Chines lutes The tenor ruan, the bass ruan, and the pipa with Xu Pingxin providing accompaniment on the yangqin and drum. The Ruan are a family of long-necked, round-bodied, plucked lutes with four strings. The ruan is an indigenous instrument of China with a history of more than 2000 years. It is recorded in many ancient Chinese literary works. In recent decades it has developed into a family of three types an alto, tenor, and a bass. Ms. Miao Xiaoyun is a musician of outstanding virtuosity and versatility. She plays several types of Chinese lutes, including tenor ruan, bass ruan, and pipa. Born in Beijing, Ms. Miao started to learn various plucked instruments at an early age with renowned teachers in China, among them Wang Fandi, Wang Zhongbing, and Pan Yuzhang. In 1978 she won a competition for the entrance examination to the Central Conservatoire of Music in Beijing. Upon graduation in 1982, she became the first teacher in the China Conservatoire of Music to establish the ruan as a major instrument. She has toured widely, both in China and abroad, giving many concerts.