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Strumming and Humming
(that's Guangzhou)
Updated: 2004-02-16 14:47  If you thought harmonicas were only good for playing the
blues, you're stuck in the wrong key. This month guitarist Stephen Chau and
harmonicist Mark Chan, both from Hong Kong, will perform works by a compendium
of composers from Dmitri Shostakovich to Henry Mancini.
Xinghai Concert
Hall's February 5 event marks Guangzhou's first harmonica concert and it
promises not to disappoint. The duo is scheduled to perform 18 pieces, ranging
from classical and traditional tunes to movie themes. With the concert falling
on Yuan Xiao, the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day, scheduled songs
such as My Laden Love and The Moon Tells My Heart will be
especially poignant.
While Chau and Chan have only been playing together
since the turn of the new millennium, each has an impressive personal history of
musical achievements.
Chau has been playing classical guitar since the
early '80s and took first place in the 1982 Hong Kong Guitar Competition. After
studying classical guitar at the Hong Kong Conservatory, he relocated to Spain
where he received further musical instruction from several guitar 'names', such
as Jorge Ariza, Manuel Barrueco and Leo Brouwer. In the mid-90s Chau started his
own chamber group and recorded his first album, Duet, in
1996.
Chan learned harmonica under the expert tutelage of his mentor Feng
An. After joining the YMCA Harmonica Ensemble at the age of 12, Chan took the
Hong Kong harmonica scene by storm, garnering golds in nearly every local
competition. By 2001, Chan and fellow Hong Kong mouth-organ maestro Alan Ho,
took top spots in the World Harmonica Competition in Trossingen, Germany.
Chan and Chau teamed up in 2002, a year that saw the duo place first in
Kanagawa, Japan's Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival. In 2003, the two unleashed
their own production, Poetry in Motion, at the Theatre du Pif, the Hong
Kong-based cross-cultural bilingual theatre company.
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