Lily Xie, a young artist from Vancouver, Canada, has recently held her first solo concert by the Okanagan Lake with the theme of “East Meeting West.” Lily, who had just started her career, did a rendition of Western classical pieces by composers such as Schumann, Beethoven, and Schubert with piano—the king of Western instruments. Besides, she also used guzheng, the king of Eastern instruments, to perform oriental folk songs such as “The Butterfly Lovers” and “Grudge of Capital City.” The way she thought outside of the box and achieved innovative breakthroughs in her performance made her concert a distinctive one. At the age of 15, she completed a guzheng and piano concerto with a player piano all by herself, becoming the first in North America and the world to accomplish an inventive performance using SPIRIO|r, a high-resolution player piano from Steinway & Sons and a Chinese musical instrument (guzheng)! She has given life to a whole new performance mode that involves the integration of technological advancements and a piano brand with a century of history, the fusion of Western and Eastern cultures, and the mix of modern and classical performance modes. For this, Phoenix TV has held an exclusive interview with Lily Xie and Art Zhang, Lily’s mentor and a renowned music teacher in Canada.

Susannah (host): As an enthusiastic young artist in your teenage years, you have won the 2018 Canadian Young Artist Standards of Excellence Award and the First Prize in the first Canada Steinway Challenge Cup comprising six concerts over two years. On top of that, you have also held your first open-air solo concert by the beautiful Okanagan Lake! Could you tell our audience about the story of your childhood?
 
Lily Xie: I was born into a family of artists in Beijing, China. My ancestors were one of the founding fathers of modern drama and film education in China. Therefore, I have inherited my family’s tradition and learned to play the piano for ten years since I was young. However, I have had a rather unconventional journey. My family bought me a piano when I was five, but I did not start learning it at that time. Instead, I only started playing the piano when I was nine because of a special reason. After an accident that happened to me when I came to Canada at the age of 12, I finally began to learn piano systemically! I believe I’m quite a late bloomer!

In fact, I’ve always been passionate about ice skating, especially individual figure skating. Like all other parents who have high hopes for their children, my parents bought me a Steinway & Sons upright piano from Hamburg, Germany when I was five. The piano was said to be a rare find in Beijing at that time, as one had to wait for six months for the piano to be delivered. Yet, I was not interested. To my relief, my parents were very open-minded, and they didn’t force me to start learning piano right away. There was a time my parents brought me to attend a music salon organized by Volkswagen, and there were all kinds of musical instruments displayed in the exhibition hall. Among the instruments, I was fascinated by the djembe and guzheng. A beautiful crew member, who noticed my curious face, taught me how to play the guzheng. That was the first time I had come into contact with a guzheng, so I was very excited. On the way home, I expressed my desire to learn to play the guzheng to my parents, who then bought me a remarkable guzheng shortly after. The guzheng that has accompanied me for eight years is a national treasure—a commemorative guzheng made by Mr. Xu Zhengao, the Father of Guzheng in China and an inheritor of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, on his 80th birthday.

One day, when I was nine, I suddenly told my parents I wanted to learn to play the piano! My parents asked me why, and guess how I answered them? I said, “The piano is so expensive. It’s such a waste that no one uses it. I’ll try learning it.” Just like that, other than guzheng and djembe I had been playing since I was five, I started playing the piano too. I was so fickle-minded! I’m very grateful for my first piano teacher, Zhou Yi, who taught me with great patience. What really ignited my passion for piano was an accident that happened after I moved to Vancouver with my family when I was 12. I sprained my foot during an intensive figure skating training session in preparation for my first provincial competition in British Columbia. After being diagnosed with a bone fracture, I rested at home. For some reason, the idea of retiring from ice skating to focus on piano popped up in my mind at that time. I started participating in figure skating competitions of ISI Asia in places like Beijing and Shenzhen when I was nine, and I even won three titles in the amateur category! The background music I chose for those competitions happened to be “The Butterfly Lovers,” a guzheng and piano concerto. Little did I know that six years later, I would perform the song at my first concert!  Perhaps, it was all written in the stars. I enjoy the feeling of gliding on the ice while “The Butterfly Lovers” is playing in the background. It makes me feel like I’m a flying butterfly.

Then, I became a student of Art Zhang, a renowned music educator in Canada. I started learning piano systematically in 2018 and won the Canadian Young Artist Standards of Excellence Award of that year! From then on, I was on a roll—I participated in six Steinway & Sons concerts in two years, volunteered in a charity concert for Vancouver General Hospital, and won the first Canada Steinway Challenge Cup! As the first high school student volunteer from Canada, I became one of the hosts of a children's program for Chinese Radio Seattle in the United States, specializing in introducing classic Western literature such as “Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Around the World in Eighty Days,” and many others. I was probably the youngest Canadian host of an American radio station. After all, I was only in eighth grade at that time!

On the 5th of August, I had my first open-air solo concert by the Okanagan Lake and became the first in the world to perform a concerto with a SPIRIO|r, a high-resolution player piano from Steinway & Sons, and a guzheng! My second solo indoor charity concert will be held in October at the Vancouver Playhouse. Besides piano solo, piano and guzheng concerto, and performance using a SPIRIO|r and a guzheng, there will also be a trio with a violin and my collaboration with some up-and-coming artists in the concert to celebrate my 16th birthday! Let me reveal a surprise element of the upcoming concert—I’ll host the concert! Given the current economic environment, I’d better save some costs for my parents.

If I had to conclude my learning journey over the past ten years, I’d say I’ve learned to make good use of my strengths. While other piano learners in Vancouver and Toronto focus on piano, I’ve mastered guzheng. In the small group of people in Canada who play the guzheng, my piano skill is above average. Among the people who play the piano and guzheng on the west coast of North America, I stand out by volunteering in traditional and self-media programs as a host. I respect the people around me, read world classics, perform Western and Eastern music, and promote the importance of art like a missionary. Being innovative and brave to try new things is how I celebrate my youth!

Susannah (host): About your first solo concert, I understand that it had a theme of “East Meeting West.” There was a stimulating interaction between guzheng and piano, the kings of Eastern and Western instruments, respectively. Some creative elements that were absent from a conventional concert were also incorporated into your performance. Could you tell us more about the things you did differently in the East Meeting West Guzheng and Piano Concerto, how you achieved the breakthroughs, and what they meant to you?  

Lily Xie: “Speaking of the innovative breakthroughs in ‘East Meeting West Guzheng and Piano Concerto,’ I must mention my dedicated mentors in appreciation of what I have learned from them. They are Iris Fan, a famous music educator in Canada, Art Zhang, a renowned music educator in Vancouver, and Ye Nian, a guzheng educator in Beijing.

In a Steinway & Sons piano concert held in Vancouver three years ago, I played the piano and guzheng and hosted the event. As I was the first high school student from Canada who hosted a program about classic Western literature for Chinese Radio Seattle in the United States, I was able to host the event with ease. I met Iris Fan, a famous music educator, when the piano concert ended. She studied at Harvard University and was an expert in teaching teenagers about music for more than 20 years. She proposed a brilliant idea that was unique yet challenging to me—to hold an unconventional concert involving a SPIRIO|r and a guzheng in the same ensemble. In other words, one artist had to complete the concerto that was supposed to be performed by two artists! The piano piece was pre-recorded, edited, and played in high-resolution using advanced technologies while the guzheng was played live. It was an unprecedented performance mode! Iris asked me whether I was willing to accept the challenge that no one had ever tried before. I really admire Iris’s extraordinary foresight, considering that no other industry experts or musicians in the world discovered or referred to her idea in the two years before the concert. After three years of preparation, a brand-new performance method was born professionally. Meanwhile, Steinway & Sons kept a low profile, never revealing a thing about my concert and never interfering with my practice. It shows that Steinway & Sons is not only a century-old luxury piano brand that enjoys a prestigious reputation, but it also has exceptional management and ethics as a professional manager. The good collaboration between the art industry and the commercial world is what I aspire to strive for in my career as an innovative artist.

Honestly speaking, I had no idea how challenging the performance would be back then. As the saying goes, “They who know nothing fear nothing.” I was so carried away by the excitement of collaborating with a computer that I considered it just a fun video game. In my perception, it could be developed into an immersive virtual musical experience in the metaverse. The practice and preparation for the concert turned out to be incredibly taxing! Looking back on the past three years, I made ample preparations and took one step at a time to prevent myself from getting stuck in a dull and rigid mindset. Other than fine-tuning the techniques to coordinate the conventional Western keyboard instruments and Eastern string instruments, I also needed to take into account my interaction with the computer. The concert was a precise and strict collaboration between humans and advanced technologies without the subtlety and flexibility of a human performance. Like athletes waiting for the starting pistol to be fired at the starting line, both the computer and I must start playing a piece simultaneously and complement each other perfectly without any errors. Otherwise, the whole performance would be ruined! As there was no one I could learn from, I could only keep on practicing to improve. The 1,000 days felt like a millennium, and there were moments I almost broke down in tears. What I experienced was not the anxiety of taking a practical grade piano exam. Instead, it was the tedium of repeating the same thing again and again to reach perfection. I told myself, “If you want to be more excellent than your peers, you must treat yourself harsher!” I couldn’t help being impressed by Steinway & Sons as I got to enjoy the subtle difference between each different note, the precision and flow of the music, and the fine connection between the keys and the pedals exclusive to theaters and professional studios. I was lucky to receive guidance from Art Zhang, who was present during my practice sessions. Also, I really appreciate Ye Nian’s advice given to me online from Beijing, which was 8,450 kilometers away from me. All in all, I owe the success of the concert to my three dedicated mentors. Together, we’ve witnessed a ground-breaking multicultural innovation that will inspire artists of future generations! I’m glad I didn’t let my mentors down, and my gratitude for them is beyond words!

The unconventionality of the SPIRIO|r and guzheng concerto is manifested in the mission at the core—that is to tell a Chinese story in the Canadian way. Traditional Chinese romantic and patriotic folk tales and musical instruments are blended with Western classical piano to form a natural and people-oriented fusion. To put it simply, it is a move that can kill multiple birds with one stone! It opens up a lot of possibilities for SPIRIO|r to be played together with other Eastern， Western, Latin, and African instruments, drives the evolution of artificial intelligence, and popularizes the metaverse. The merge of classical art and high-tech achieved by Steinway & Sons will promote a diverse culture and expose people to the charm of high-tech classical and contemporary music. My concert is only the beginning; it will lead to a butterfly effect, inspiring more similar attempts to be done in Canada, North America, China, and the entire world. Smart and diverse classical Eastern and Western concerts will become a trend. Steinway & Sons has been the leading piano brand and the first choice of 97% of musicians for concerts because of their aspiration to “make the best piano in the world.” Pianists, guzheng players, violinists, flutists, and guitarists will no longer be deemed inflexible. Musicians mastering and playing multiple instruments can be the future trend in the industry!

Susannah (host): As an innovative music artist, what inspires you to take up such a challenging mission? You are also a student, and most parents will be glad to see their children going to college or working in the United States. Have you made any academic or career plans for your future?

Lily Xie: “It’s love! It’s because I love music and my family! Because of love, I toughed it out and conquered the challenges in the end! I believe two years of doing almost nothing other than practicing for the concert is an unacceptable move for a high school student be it in Canada, the United States, or China! I came across a set of big data: there are more than 500,000 primary and secondary school students in British Columbia, more than 5 million in Canada, and more than 50 million in the United States. I suppose most parents would make those my age learn to play the pieces for practical piano grade exams or send them to tuition centers. Yet, I walk the path that no one else chooses, and that makes me stand out. I’m grateful for the fair environment in Canadian society. Thinking out of the box is how you stumble upon rare opportunities to shine! This isn’t the American Dream, but the Canadian Dream, as everyone can be successful here！ Taking inspiration from what Neil Armstrong said when he first set foot on the moon in 1969, I’d say what I’ve done is one small step for me, one giant leap for all art enthusiasts and artists in the world. My endeavor can motivate people of all ethnicities and regions, especially young people, to unleash their potential and enrich community life with more diverse artistic expressions. Thus, my goal is clear—I aspire to settle down and serve my community and expand my influence globally. In my view, one’s mindset will determine one’s style. If you don’t have a fixed set of principles, you will easily lose your way.

Regarding my future academic or career plans, I consider myself a conventional high school student. As how Confucius put it in “The Analects” 25 centuries ago, a real talent should be well-rounded. I have no desire to work as a full-time professional musician, as music is only a part of my career plan. The University of British Columbia is the ideal college for me. Adopting the strategy of making use of my strengths, I’ll major in the fields in which I excel to equip myself with the knowledge to find the Archimedean point between the art industry and the commercial world and promote globalization and multilateralism. Besides, I’d be reluctant to travel too far away from my parents. My parents are my friends. Just like me, they believe in the philosophy of enjoying life and sharing thoughts. There’s no generation gap between us in this aspect. I like the atmosphere of the community in Vancouver, Canada, where there are abundant opportunities that can bring you success. As Canada has offered me the chance to try out new things, I’ll create more miracles in return! I love art, but I love my family even more! Thanks for having me here today, Phoenix TV and Susannah!

（Sources：www.ifeng.com）