Ping-pong meets music in diplomatic tryst

Photo by Jiang Dong / China Daily

"It started as a joke - we watched ping-pong games and thought it's cool to create music combining (it with) the sport," Akiho told China Daily during rehearsals before the concert.

"It's crazy. I don't play ping-pong myself. But it turned out to be a serious music experiment."

Then they looked for two real table tennis players in the club. Hsing, a 20-year-old champion in US women's table tennis, seemed like a perfect choice, followed by Landers, who not only played table tennis in China, but also the bassoon and piano. Landers, 21, started to learn music and table tennis around the same time as a child.

He played the bassoon at Carnegie Hall at age 13. For a long time he was not sure which to choose as a career but eventually he chose the sport because it meant "more action".

"I had never thought I would return to the music stage. When I played ping-pong for this piece, I felt like a musician, not an athlete," Landers says.

Landers has visited Wuhan, Hubei province, every year since 2008 and each time stayed for three months for training in table tennis.

The violinist Zeltser says that when she talked with the composer at SPiN Club, she felt interested about mixing the sounds of the table tennis ball with music.

"The violin is a very melodic instrument, so the concept of the violin through a ping-pong game is to make it not only melodic but also percussive," she says. "It's definitely a challenging work, and I'm honored to play it in the master country of the game."

Conductor Zhang says the piece is interesting and colorful not only musical but also visually.

chenjie@chinadaily.com.cn