Guangzhou People: Zi Lan Liao Has Been 'in the Elekoto Ensemble of Akin Euba'

[Akin Euba, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, University of Pittsburgh]

Guangzhou People

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Zi Lan Liao

“Zi Lan Liao is an international concert circuit performer on the guzheng. She has performed at the Royal Albert Hall and Royal Festival Hall, and has toured Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Finland, United States, and Australia. She also participated at the WOMAD Recording Week in Bath, England. Liao began to learn the guzheng at the age of three, when she lived in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. By the age of nine, she was winning prizes in China, including the prestigious National Youth Music Competition award. She left China with her family in 1983 for the United Kingdom, where she continued her music studies at Chetham's School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. In addition to the guzheng, she also specializes in the Western concert harp and Chinese traditional dance.

Apart from playing traditional music and works written by Chinese composers, Liao also has had composers outside China write music for her, which has widened her repertoire from classical to contemporary and electronic music. She has collaborated with Peter Gabriel and Nigel Kennedy, and worked with African, Indian, and European musicians in the Elekoto Ensemble of Akin Euba. Her collaborative work with other world artists was released in 1995 on Real World Records's ''A Week or Two in the Real World'' various artists CD.” [Full Post]  The Music website of the University of Pittsburgh says Oyebade Dosunmu “...directs Elekoto, a vocal ensemble based in Pittsburgh, which performs the choral works of modern African composers.” [The Nigerian composer Akin Euba (b. 1935) has developed the theory of African Pianism and is profiled at AfriClassical.com]