Program

With a European violin in one hand and a Chinese violin (erhu) in the other, master teacher and violinist Shaw Pong Liu takes students on an adventure of cross-cultural communication, connecting the language of music to the tonal language of Mandarin. Drawing on her travels as a Chinese–American studying in Beijing, Shaw Pong uses her instruments, singing voice, looping pedal, and multi-lingual skills to demonstrate the variety of ways in which people use linguistic and musical tones to communicate. While exploring facets of Chinese culture, students will learn to sing the pentatonic scale and to speak, sing and physically demonstrate the four tones of Mandarin—skills that help both in learning languages and learning music.