Magic wind

Daniel Shao's talent has roots in his family tree

On a recent chilly night, the German Radio Orchestra gave a concert under the baton of conductor Martin Fischer-Dieskau.

After the first piece, Wagner's prelude to Lohengrin, a young British man walked onto the stage and greeted the audiences with "da jia hao" (hello everyone). While the audiences cheered his fluent Mandarin, he put his fingers on his flute and started playing Mozart's Flute Concerto No 1 along with the orchestra.

The young man is Daniel Shao, a 20-year-old musician born to a Chinese father and British mother. Shao has toured with the German Radio Orchestra, performing in Guangzhou, Qingdao, and Weifang of Shandong province before the concert in Beijing.

"I always feel connected to China because of my father and I spent a year living in Beijing at the age of 6, which made me excited to return for the first time as a musician," says Shao, who is currently studying flute and piano at Oxford University.

His young career has been set off not only by winning prizes, such as the first prize at the British Flute Society Competition and being a wind finalist in the BBC Young Musician competition, but also playing concertos with established orchestras, including the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and Kingston Chamber Orchestra.

German conductor Fischer-Dieskau, who has been the music director of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra for three years, says Shao is a musician with an open heart.

During the recent China tour, Shao's performances won plenty of applause from audiences, especially his improvisational performance of some Chinese folk songs, including A Ditty of Yimeng Mountains. Among the crowd was his father, Shao Wei, who watched his son's performance with a contented face.

"I feel proud of him, especially when I toured with him, performing in my hometown, Weifang," says Shao Wei, a middle-aged businessman, who moved to the United Kingdom in 1994. "Music will follow you throughout your life. Whether he wants to be a professional musician for a lifetime or not, it will be good for him."

An enthusiastic fan of classical music, Shao Wei studied Chinese philosophy in China and received training in composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in the 1980s. He passed his love for classical music to his children like many Chinese parents, but he allowed his children to make decisions on their own.

"First of all, I wanted to play something different. I have some people in my family who play the flute as professional musicians," says Daniel Shao, who started learning flute at 9, attended the Purcell School and played in many master classes with flutists such as Denis Bouriakov, Rachel Brown and Michael Cox. "I like the sound of the flute, which is golden. Also, the instrument is versatile."

He recalls that it was hard to make a sound in the beginning and he had to practice four hours a day.

Since he studied flute with his younger sister at the same time, he was quite jealous of her ability to learn the instrument more quickly than he did.

When he was in primary school in the UK, one of his teachers played flute in a concert, performing an extract of The Pink Panther Theme, an instrumental composition by Henry Mancini written for the 1963 film.

"It was quite jazzy and also adaptable to other styles, like folk style, classical style," says Daniel Shao, who fell in love with the instrument instantly then.

By the time he was 14, Daniel Shao was discussing his potential career as a flutist with his uncle, who was once the principal flutist of the local orchestra.

"I love playing with an orchestra, making contact with other people through music and communicating with the audience," he says.

The ambitious young flutist also likes composing with Chinese music elements. The tour in China has inspired him to adapt the Chinese wood flute and folk music into his performance.

"I don't think everyone realizes how classical music impacts their lives. For example, when they watch a film, they may ignore the fact that the music came from a live orchestra rather than a computer," he says.

chennan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 02/13/2015 page29)