Liu Sola and Friends Ensemble: Liu Sola & Amina C. Myers with Yang Jing

Join us for a rare and invigorating performance by Liu Sola and Amina Claudine Myers with Yang Jing on Saturday August 11, 2007 at 7:30pm. Don’t miss this magical interplay of voice, pipa, and piano as Chinese and African American musical traditions intertwine into provocative soundscapes. The concert will be held at the Winifred Smith Hall (University of California Irvine) and is free and open to the public.

Sola is an internationally acclaimed composer, a highly individualistic vocalist and also a major contemporary fiction writer. She has composed music for symphony orchestras, ensembles, solo instruments, as well as music for film, television, modern theater and dance productions. Sola created the first Chinese rock opera Blue Sky Green Sea with a libretto based on her own award-wining novella of the same name. More recently, (as in a new concert Celebration of light and darkness – 2005), she has been devoting her musical attention to fashioning contemporary sounds from traditional Chinese instruments, while continuing to explore new vocal styles. http//www.liusola.com

Amina Claudine Myers is a renowned pianist, organist, vocalist, composer, actress and educator. Owing to her musical training and wide-ranging background, Myers moves gracefully, balancing precision with passion, from dust-road country blues and soulful organ fund to shimmering tone poems and street-smart urban R&B. The resulting sound combines the spontaneity and intimacy of jazz with the balance and high-impact intensity of pop music. Ms. Myers has recorded and/or performed with Archie Shepp, Charlie Haden´s Liberation Orchestra, James Blood Ulmer, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Muhal Richard Abrams, Lester Bowie and Bill Laswell. She has currently nine recordings released under her own name.

Yang Jing is a Master in musical performance; Member of China Musician Association Professor of China Music Institute Councilor of the China Folk Orchestral Music CouncilExecutive Councilor of the Pipa Professional Council Ms. Yang began her study in the China Music Institute in 1982 and was taught by the famous Pipa player Liu Dehai. In 1986, Ms. Yang started her graduate study in the same institute and obtained a master degree two years later. In her performing career, Ms. Yang has been being an awards winner in many occasions. Her famous plays and CDs include “Catching the Sun”, “Mulan”, “Thoughts of Qilian”, “Great King Putting off his Armor” etc. Ms. Yang has given numerical concerts in more than twenty countries. Her performing is well known as pure natural sound with “full understanding to the music”.