Monthly Archives: May 2014

Harmony of Poetry and Music – Carnegie Recital

– Chinese Yage Recital by Tenor Fan Jingma

As an emerging vocal genre, Yage, the “elegant songs”, is the Chinese poetry set to music. Fan Jingma, the tenor who initiated the concept, summarizes it as the fusion of the Lieder style, Bel Canto technique, and Chinese poetry. Yage, in the form of Chinese art songs, shares the same traits as the German Lieder, French Chanson, Italian Bel Canto, and Russian Romance both in spirit and in format: carefully selected poems that are set to music and accompanied by a piano or a chamber ensemble.     Continue reading →

New York Gets Taste of the Yage

Updated: 2014-05-20 11:21

 (China Daily USA)                  By Amy He in New York

Fan Jingma just wrapped up a four-city tour of Yage: A Poetic Sense of China with a performance at Carnegie Hall. Fan created yage, a new genre that combines Chinese poetry with song. Provided to China Daily

Yage literally means “elegant song” and combines poetry with song, in the tradition of French chanson and German lieder. But Fan said that Chinese audiences were indifferent when they first heard him singing it, contrasting sharply to Western audiences, like the sold-out crowd that caught Fan’s performance at Carnegie Hall on May 15.When opera singer Fan Jingma first introduced a new musical genre, yage, to audiences back home in China five years ago, they were unenthusiastic.  Continue reading →