Liu Fang 1974) is a Chinese–Canadian musician who is one of the most prominent ''

pipa The pipa, pípá, or p'i-p'a () is a traditional Chinese musical instrument belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets rangi ...

'' players in the world. Described in the media as the "empress of pipa" (''

L'actualité ''L'actualité'' is a Canadian French-language news and general interest magazine published in Montreal by Rogers Communications until 2016, then by Mishmash (XPND Capital). The magazine has over a million readers, according to Canada's Print Meas ...

''), "divine mediator" (World), "the greatest ambassadress of the art of the pipa", Liu Fang is known as "possessing virtuoso technique, grace and a unique empathy toward the music she plays – whether it is a traditional and folk tune or a modern Western composition" (All Music Guide). "She has an extraordinary focused, poised presence in her manner and her playing. In a lesser player this is just a trained formality; the body of material and techniques for her instruments is extremely highly developed, passed down through centuries. But Liu Fang’s total devotion to her playing has moved her beyond perfect execution to the creativity and flexibility that marks a true musician."(in the ''

fRoots ''fRoots'' (pronounced "eff-Roots", originally ''Folk Roots'') was a specialist music magazine published in the UK between 1979 and 2019. It specialised in folk and world music, and featured regular compilation downloadable albums, with occas ...

'' Magazine, 06.2006).

Biography

Born in

Kunming Kunming is the capital and largest city of the province of Yunnan in China. The political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province, Kunming is also the seat of the provincial government. During World War II, Kunming was a Ch ...

in the Chinese province of

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

, she began playing the ''pipa'' at the age of 6. Her first solo public performance was at the age of 9. In 1986, at age 11, she played for

Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...

. Her studies at the

Shanghai Conservatory of Music The Shanghai Conservatory of Music (SHCMusic) is a municipal public college in Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the City of Shanghai and is part of the Double First-Class Construction. The college was founded on November 27, 1927. The Sh ...

broadened her musical range and allowed her to study the ''

guzheng The zheng (), or guzheng (), is a Chinese List of Chinese musical instruments#Plucked, plucked zither. The modern guzheng commonly has 21, 25, or 26 strings, is long, and is tuned in a Major scale, major pentatonic scale. It has a large, reson ...

''. At the age of 22, Liu Fang immigrated to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and is now a Canadian citizen, currently residing in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

. The decision to move to

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

allowed her virtuosic playing to reach a wider international audience. Since 1999, she has performed hundreds of solo concerts featuring Chinese traditional and classical music on her two solo instruments -

and

. Her profile has risen due to her rich and deeply spiritual performances as well as a wide-ranging repertoire that features music from Chinese classical and folk traditions (including pieces rarely heard) as well as contemporary works from both east and west.

Side projects

Apart from her numerous solo concerts, Liu Fang has also many intercultural collaborations in terms of "Silk and Steel Projects", where "Silk" represents the traditional culture of China whereas "steel" is a metaphor for modernity and western culture. Her last album entitled "Silk Sound" (Le son de soie) featured musical dialogues with artists from three different continents and was awarded the grand prize of L'Académie Charles Cros, the French equivalent of the US

Recording Academy National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc. (NARAS), doing business as The Recording Academy, is an American learned academy of musicians, producers, recording engineers, and other musical professionals. It is widely known for its Gramm ...

Awards

Back in 2001, Liu Fang was the only musician to receive the prestigious "Future Generation Millennium Prize" awarded by the

Canada Council for the Arts The Canada Council for the Arts (), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It is Canada's public arts funder, with a mandate to foster and promote the study a ...

to three artists of different disciplines under 30 years of age. The words of the jury summed up her achievements rather succinctly: "Liu Fang's mastery of the pipa and the guzheng has established her international reputation as a highly talented young interpreter of traditional Chinese music. She aspires to combine her knowledge and practice of eastern traditions with western classical music, contemporary music and improvisation, thereby creating new musical forms, uniting different cultures and discovering new audiences."

Live performances

Liu Fang has made a number of national and international radio and TV appearances, produced several CDs. Liu Fang was invited as one of the featured artists by BBC World Service for the concert on November 7, 2003, dedicated to World AIDS Day. She performed at the 60th anniversary of

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

on November 16, 2005, and has also been honored by the government of Canada.Bio page at Philmultic
/ref> She has performed with orchestras, string quartets and various instruments the works of many contemporary composers, including R. Murray Schafer,

Tan Dun Tan Dun (, ; born 18 August 1957) is a Chinese-born American composer and conductor. A leading figure of contemporary classical music, he draws from a variety of Western and Chinese influences, a pairing which has shaped much of his life and mu ...

Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...

Janet Maguire Janet Maguire (1927–2019) was an American composer who was born in Chicago and resided in Venice, Italy. Biography Maguire is known particularly for her arrangement of the finale of Giacomo Puccini's ''Turandot'', in which she exclusively u ...

, Ian Wilson,

José Evangelista José Evangelista (5 August 1943 – 10 January 2023) was a Spanish composer and music educator who was based in Montreal, Canada. He was professor of composition at the Université de Montréal from 1979 to 2009. A member of the Canadian Leag ...

Zhou Long Zhou Long (; born July 8, 1953) is a Chinese American composer. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Biography Zhou Long was born in Beijing, China. Born into an artistic family, he began studying piano from an early age. Due to the artist ...

Melissa Hui Melissa Hui is a Chinese-Canadian composer and pianist. She was born in 1966 in Hong Kong and currently resides in Montreal where she has been a faculty member at McGill University since 2010. Notable works by this artist include ''and blue spar ...

, Diego Luzuriaga, Chen Yi, Toshiyuki Hiraoka, Yoshiharu Takahashi, David Loeb, Hugue Leclair, Simon Bertrand and Chantale Laplante, to mention a few, and has performed frequently with guitarist Michael O'Toole and the violinist

Malcolm Goldstein Malcolm Goldstein (born March 27, 1936, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American-Canadian composer, violinist and improviser who has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s. He received an M.A. in music composi ...

Movie Soundtracks

*2012
Summer in Provence
Directed by Christian Lara *2011:

We Need to Talk About Kevin (film) ''We Need to Talk About Kevin'' is a 2011 psychological drama film directed by Lynne Ramsay from a screenplay she co-wrote with Rory Stewart Kinnear, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Lionel Shriver. A long process of development an ...

, directed by

Lynne Ramsay Lynne Ramsay (born 5 December 1969) is a Scottish filmmaker and cinematographer, best known for the feature films '' Ratcatcher'' (1999), '' Morvern Callar'' (2002), '' We Need to Talk About Kevin'' (2011), '' You Were Never Really Here'' (2017) ...

*2007:

Up the Yangtze ''Up the Yangtze'' is a 2007 documentary film directed by Chinese Canadian, Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang. The film focuses on people affected by the building of the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze river in Hubei, China. The theme of ...

, directed by

Yung Chang Yung Chang is a Chinese Canadian film director and was part of the collective member directors of Canadian film production firm EyeSteelFilm. Chang is a graduate of Concordia University's Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Montreal (BFA 99), the ...

. *1998
The sun rises over Tian-An-Men Square
directed by Shui-Bo Wang.

Discography

Albums solo : * ''The soul of pipa, vol. 3'' : Pipa Music from Chinese folk traditions, Philmultic, 2006 * ''Emerging Lotus'' : Chinese traditional guzheng music, Philmultic, 2005 * ''The soul of pipa, vol. 2'' : Chinese classical Pipa Music: from the ancient to the recent, Philmultic, 2003 * ''The soul of pipa, vol. 1'' : Chinese Pipa Music from the classical tradition, Philmultic, Canada, 2001 * ''Chinese Traditional Pipa Music'' : Oliver Sudden Productions Inc, Canada/USA, 1997 Collaborations : * ''Along the Way - Duo pipa & violin'' : Philmultic, 2010 * ''Changes - Duo pipa & Guitar'' : Philmultic, 2008 * ''Le son de soie'' : Accords-Croisés/Harmonia Mundi, Paris, 2006 * ''Mei Hua - Fleur de prunier'' :

ATMA Classique ATMA Classique is an independent classical record label based in Montreal, and welcomes artists from Quebec, across Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territorie ...

, Canada, 2004 * ''Arabic and Chinese music'' : Liu Fang et Farhan Sabbagh, Philmultic, 2000 * ''Musique chinoise'' : Solo, duo, et avec orchestre de chambre, Philmultic, 1999

Notes

External links

Liu Fang at CBC TV

Liu Fang live at Dutch TV Vrije Geluiden

Liu Fang Interview at allaboutjazz.com

Liu Fang's official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Liu, Fang 1974 births 20th-century Chinese musicians Chinese emigrants to Canada Canadian musicians of Chinese descent Contemporary classical music performers Guzheng players Living people Musicians from Montreal Naturalized citizens of Canada People from Kunming Pipa players Musicians from Yunnan