Orchid

Shao Rong | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 23, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Pacific Moon [Alleg]
• ASIN: B00005604D
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,622 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Wild Rose

2. Bamboo Dance

3. Precious Moon ('Yue Er Gao)

4. True Love

5. A Day Goes By

6. The Land of Woods and Waters

7. Unicorn

8. Market Place

9. One More Tale

10. Wild Rose (Reprise)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars East meet West, January 6, 2002

By 

Boudica (Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orchid (Audio CD)

One of the most pleasant sounds to the ear is a well played pipa, or Chinese lute, a 2000 year old instrument that is just making itself known to the western world, but is well known in the orient.

Shao Rong is considered one of the top musical prodigies in all of China. Playing piano since age 5 and the pipa since age 10, she was one of only 12 students taken into the new music school of the Beijing National Central Music Institute from among the 20,000 who applied.

She has won "The Artistic Excellence Prize" as one of the outstanding artists at the Shanghai Arts Festival. She moved to Japan and enrolled at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where she played pipa and was an actress in Madame Butterfly. She has also performed as a soloist with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and as a soloist in the Sapporo Symphony. She has played at numerous premiers of various Japanese and Chinese artists and is considered a master in her field. She has been part of such groups as the Li-Hua Ensemble and Tempyo-Gafu, an Asian ancient-music ensemble.

Now that you know who Shao Rong is, her CD "Orchid" introduces her to the western world on the Pacific Moon label. She blends her piano skills with her pipa, which is played in the traditional Chinese style. The music is written by Seiichi Kyoda, part of Pacific Moon's recording team which also includes Kazumasa Yoshioka. The only exception is the track "Precious Moon" which is based on an old Chinese classic song "Yue Er Gao".

The music is a blend of east and west, making this easy on the western ear yet just oriental enough to be distinctly different. Each track offers the distinctive flavor of Oriental sounds worked skillfully into western classical music. The best example is "True Love", which gives the feeling of a traditional love ballad but has the touch of cherry blossoms falling in a Japanese garden.

The CD maintains the feel of being uniquely Oriental in flavor, though it crosses the cultural lines back and forth. "The Land of Woods and Waters" is very distinctly Japanese, and we "feel" the traditional quality of the pipa in this track. "Unicorn" gives you the full feeling of the crossover, working a soft jazz twist to the Oriental strains.

The recording quality of this CD is excellent and presents us with a perfect introduction to the beautiful music of Seiichi Kyoda as played by Shao Rong. Even the packaging is original, with sticks of rich Japanese incense included in the spine of the CD case, which allows you to smell the orient as well as enjoy the music, which Pacific Moon executives felt was just as important.

This is a wonderful addition to ambient music coming from Pacific Moon. We welcome more of this caliber of music to this genre. I also hope to hear more from Shao Rong and Seiichi Kyoda.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Orchid Shao Rong, May 23, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Orchid (Audio CD)

I cannot imagine a more beautiful, awe-inspiring, even emotional collection of music. If I had a psychiatrist, I would fire them and simply listen to Shao Rong's music. There should be six stars available for music like this.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweet, exotic and distinctive!, January 1, 2004

By 

Brianna Neal (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orchid (Audio CD)

Shao Rong's rapid, rippling strumming of the pipa, a traditional Chinese lute, commands the listener's attention and carries this recording of pleasant east-west fusion music. Other traditional instruments contributing to the soundscape include guzheng (Chinese zither), erhu (a slender Chinese fiddle shaped rather like a rebab), dizi (Chinese bamboo flute) and shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). I always enjoy the opportunity to hear non-western instruments featured in contemporary music, and this album is a good example of how it can be done. While there is nothing earth-shatteringly inventive about Seiichi Kyoda's compositions on "Orchid", they are intriguing and unjarring vehicles for combining Asian instruments and musical motifs with that ubiquitous jazz/pop combination of keyboards, guitar, synth-beats and bass that so often proves to be an international passport for traditional musics around the world. Listeners who might otherwise not be exposed find themselves intrigued by the unusual sounds mixed in with those they are used to, and hopefully some of those listeners choose to explore further, learning to appreciate the true, unadulterated roots of the traditional music and the culture that created it. In "Orchid", it is a sweet, wistful, microtonal complexity of sound that shines through in the stringed instruments' playing, reminiscent of the sliding tones of the spoken Chinese language. It's evocative and intoxicating. My favorite numbers on this recording are the sweeping "Wild Rose", the beat-driven "Precious Moon", and the mysterious, compelling and ever-developing "One More Tale". Actually, the only cut on the album I could really do without is "Bamboo Dance", not because there's anything wrong with the music, but the everpresent synthesized sound of dripping water obscures the tune, and in fact--rather like Chinese water torture--becomes highly annoying. Overall, however, this is a truly enjoyable CD with many pleasant surprises. Jia Peng-Fang, the erhu player on "Orchid", and Jian Xiao Qing, who plays guzheng, each have solo albums of their own out on the Pacific Moon label. They are similar in style to "Orchid". And for more of composer Seiichi Kyoda's work, try "East Wind" by the Japanese group Uttara Kuru.