Cover Charles Yang won the Best Classical Instrumental Solo at the Grammy Awards (Photo: courtesy of Petr Kahoun)
Charles Yang won the Best Classical Instrumental Solo at the Grammy Awards (Photo: courtesy of Petr Kahoun)
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Pop and classical music in the same concert? Why not, says violinist Charles Yang, who’s set to play The Beatles, Mendelssohn and more in a Hong Kong show this month
Winning a Grammy is thought to be the ultimate validation for a musician. And Charles Yang has already attained that by winning the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category at the prestigious awards in 2023. But the Chinese American violinist is not just a talented instrumentalist. He also has a soulful voice which has won the hearts of many, including Wonder Woman (2017) actress Robin Wright who, after attending his concert years ago, invited Yang and his band Time for Three to compose the music score for Land, her 2021 adventure film.
This month, Yang is coming to perform in our city for the first time with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, where he will play both classical pieces and pop songs, including The Animals’ House of The Rising Sun (1964) and The Beatles’ Blackbird (1968).
Ahead of the concert, Tatler caught up with him to find out what inspired him to be a classical and pop violinist and singer, his thoughts on AI and more.
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Above Charles Yang is all for bringing pop and classical music closer to each other
(Photo: courtesy of Kevin Condon)
Charles Yang is all for bringing pop and classical music closer to each other (Photo: courtesy of Kevin Condon)
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Pop and classical music are very different genres. What inspired you to blend these?
I met my musical partner [and pianist] Peter Dugan when I was a student at Juilliard. He grew up with gospel and jazz. At school, we would play Frank Sinatra and the blues. We realised there are so many things that we can combine in these genres of music. For example, for The House of the Rising Sun, we came up with an arrangement in which the rising chord progression is quite classical and fits well with the violin and piano. Peter also added [bars from] Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude on his piano. Whenever we arrange or write music, there are plenty of strict [guidelines from] classical composers, or singer-songwriters [for pop music]. For me, my classical roots are important and I love implementing them [into my pop arrangements].
Tell us about the experience of creating the music for the film Land.
Usually in a concert, the music speaks for itself and the listeners visualise whatever they want. This was this opposite. My band and I got the clips of beautifully shot scenes and musical cues, and then we had to imagine [what music would go best with that]. This writing process was really fun. It’s a different way of using the brain. Whenever I write a song now, I put on a YouTube video, turn off the sound and write to the visual.
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Above Charles Yang is bridging cultural gaps through music (Photo: courtesy of NOTP)
Charles Yang is bridging cultural gaps through music (Photo: courtesy of NOTP)
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As a songwriter, what are your thoughts on the risks and potentials of AI?
AI is part of our evolution. There’s no stopping it and it’s the future. I recently listened to a recording of an AI violinist. For the first time, I was a little scared because it sounded like an old-school violin player.
But at the same time, AI is a tool that can advance the creative field. I used to go on a website called Rhyme Zone—it’s like a thesaurus that gave me ideas on rhymes when I was looking for lyrics. It wasn’t cheating; it offered me inspiration. With AI, it’s [even more] fascinating because it now can write a song and produce vocals out of thin air. It’s an exciting time to be a musician.
How did your multicultural upbringing influence your creative direction?
My mom studied at the Shanghai Conservatory and played with the Austin Symphony in the US. My father is a music lover. They gave me a violin when I was three, and then a piano and a guitar. I used to pratise Mendelssohn or Brahms concertos on the piano and violin, on the other hand I learnt to play The Beatles’ songs on my guitar.
As an American-born Chinese in Texas, I was one of the few Asian and classical musicians in my school. My friends would teach me Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and all the classic rock icons, and I would show them Bach, Paganini and Brahms. Sometimes, they asked me to play Pink Floyd on the violin. It was a great sharing of knowledge. It wasn’t even about me being Chinese and them being American, or even The Beatles being British. We just traded sonically what we liked.
That became my philosophy: that music is a universal language.
Above Charles Yang and Peter Dugan playing “House of the Rising Sun”
What did winning the Grammy mean to you and your band?
My bandmates and I all attended music schools such as Curtis and Juilliard. We studied the classics, but there was no music written for a band like ours: two violins and a bass. So, we had to create our own. We reached out to the greatest composers of our time, Jennifer Higdon and Kevin Puts, who understood our vision. Our album, Letters for the Future (2022), signifies a musical timestamp for today’s artists. It meant the world to us that our peers and colleagues recognised us in the classical category that is our foundation, and that we could push the industry forward with new music.
How do you weigh the value of classical music in modern times?
Classical composers [in the olden days] did not have AI technology. They had a quill, paper and candlelight, but they could create some of the most complex fugues and melodies of all time. To this day, we analyse these and get graded on them at Juilliard. So classical music has always been the peak of what humans can do.
What’s next?
I’ve recorded a violin concerto written by Kris Bowers, whom I knew back at Juilliard. He is known for writing the music of Bridgerton (seasons one to three) and The Colour Purple (2023). Our collaboration will be released in July.
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
