The Chinese young pianist Wan Jieni is touring nationwide with her concert 15° Piano & Digital Impression. On the evening of December 1, she will perform at the Changsha Concert Hall to celebrate its sixth anniversary.
Created in an isomorphic way with modern digital media, 15° Piano & Digital Impression by Wan Jieni breaks away from the conventional methodology of classical music performance by visualizing the emotional expressions interpreted by the artists, which brings the audience an immersive experience with a perfect blend of sound, light, and shadow. Jieni and her team cooperate with digital artists to create unique visual representations of each piece of music by elaborating technology such as motion capture, interactive animation, and artificial intelligence. The combination between auditory and visual senses allows a continuous conveyance of delicate emotions contained in the music, thus creating an ambiance of fused sound and scenery, and bringing to the audience an immersive and visible experience.
The theme of the concert, “15°”, stems from the interaction between music and nature: the “fifteen degrees” in temperament contains 24 musical notes; while in the 24 solar terms of traditional Chinese calendar, the sun’s movement traces every fifteen degrees as a solar term.
During the concert, fifteen classical pieces by Chinese and foreign composers, including Chopin, Grieg, Debussy, Liszt, Tan Dun, and Ding Shande, will be organized under the subject of four natural seasons and 15 solar terms. Notes that flow from the artist’s fingertips will be transformed by technology into fluctuating impressions of nature, illustrating the magic connection between music, seasons, and digital algorithms.
Wan Jieni was born in Shanghai, China in 1995 and grew up in Germany. At the age of four, she received her first piano lessons. In June 2010, Jieni passed the entrance examination at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich with excellent marks. She began her Master of Musical Arts at Yale School of Music in 2018, under the tutelage of Professor Robert Blocker and graduated in May 2020.
Jieni has appeared with major orchestras under the direction of such eminent conductors as Maestro Christoph Eschenbach and Zubin Mehta. At the age of 23, Jieni has performed as a soloist with many Chinese and Western well-known Orchestras and conductors at many of the world’s most prestigious concert halls and major performing art venues.
In addition to performing western works, Jieni does her bits to promote Chinese music, bringing classical Chinese piano solos and concertos to the stage at home and abroad. She keeps exploring innovative expressions of classical music with a view to injecting new life into traditional artistic performance to reach a wider range of audiences.
Translated by 汤伊然