– 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.
The principles of Yage singing, established by Fan Jingma, is to borrow the 18th Century Bel Canto technique of breathing control to support the strictly regulated articulation of the Chinese pronunciation in contrast to the relatively shallow breathing and the throaty upper ranged traditional Chinese singing, thus to create the sustained legato that re-enforces the musical expression of the inner world and emotions of the poets as well as the singers.
Fan Jingma, an operatic tenor, received his Bel Canto training in his native China in the 1980s before further study with Carlo Bergonzi in Italy and Franco Corelli in New York. He also attended the Juilliard School of Music in the 1990s and is being presented by the Robert Lombardo Association in New York. Fan Jingma became famous overnight in China after winning the first televised National Youth Vocal Competition in 1984, and brought to international attention for winning the 3rd Cardiff Vocal Competition in 1987, for which Placido Domingo commented as “a tenor rarely seen during the past decade.” He was also the winner of numerous vocal competitions, including the Rosa Ponselle, Opera Index, and the Pavarotti, among the others. Opera Now praises his portrayal of Goro in the 1995 film version of the opera Madam Butterfly as “is worthy of an Oscar nomination.” After 20 years of performance as a recognized Bel Canto tenor on the international opera stages, Fan Jingma has shifted his focus and devoted himself to his Yage singing in recent years. His cherished hope is that one day, Yage, as the Chinese Lieder, will be accepted, shared, and appreciated by both the Eastern and the Western worlds. For it, he has no regrets for sacrificing his brilliant operatic tenor timbre, and trained himself to obtain the serene, peaceful, and steadily controlled Yage voice. To him it is a sacrifice, but for the audience, it’s a rare opportunity to enjoy his highly refined, richly colored, stately controlled, and the subtle Yage voice, and to have a glimpse of his inner spiritual and emotional world that is full of longing, melancholy, and above all, the aesthetic beauty.
The guest star of the evening is soprano Erika Rauer, a voice graduate from Yale and an Arts Educator in NYC. Being touched by the beauty of Yage and is passionate about spreading it to the American arts and cultural scene, she is going to perform the Yage solo in Chinese and will sing duets with Fan Jingma. The famed China Philharmonic String Quartet and Piano will also perform and accompany the entire concert.
Written for the Carnegie Recital May 15, 2014