In a bid to promote Chinese culture overseas and develop deeper ties, orchestras from Shanghai have been actively taking their productions abroad, Zhang Kun reports in Shanghai.

From the traditional bamboo flute of Japan and the drums of South Asia to the domra from Russia, the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra presented a world music concert featuring more than 60 musical instruments from around the world at the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations on May 18.

The concert Our Common Homeland took place at Peking University as one of the projects showcasing Asian culture during the conference. It was the latest example of the orchestra's effort in breaking the traditional concept of Chinese folk music, and "taking it to the context of world music", according to Luo Xiaoci, head of the SHCO.

Featuring an unprecedented collaboration between Chinese and foreign musical instruments, such as the Spanish guitar and Chinese pipa, the Russian balalaika and Chinese ruan, the concert first premiered in Shanghai in November.

Such inclusiveness is the greatest characteristic of Shanghai-style Chinese music, said Luo, who is also a national-award winning guzheng (Chinese zither) player and composer.

Rong Yueming, director of Literature Institute of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, says that this mash-up of musical instruments also reflects Shanghai's long-standing tradition of embracing diversity to sustain its cultural vitality.

"Inclusiveness has long been a key feature of Shanghai culture," says Rong, who also served as chief editor of the 2019 Shanghai Cultural Development Report compiled by SASS.

The report, which reviews the cultural development of Shanghai over the past year, says that the city has been an epicenter in China for the convergence of Chinese and Western cultures.

"For more than one century, the city has demonstrated great resilience in assimilating diverse cultures, which in itself has become a distinctive characteristic of what Shanghai culture is today," Rong says in the report.

He Jianhua, chief of the Shanghai Culture Research Center and former vice-director of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, shared a similar insight.

"In comparison with Beijing, which has concentrated on presenting the essence of traditional Chinese culture, Shanghai serves more like a platform for international cultural exchange. As a result, Shanghai culture has two facets - it is both Chinese and international," says He.

In a three-year action plan aimed at turning the city into an international cultural metropolis, authorities have encouraged industry players to create more original Shanghai productions and pave the way for more cultural products to be displayed and promoted across China and around the world.

As the birthplace of the Communist Party of China and one of the country's first five ports to open to international trade, Shanghai has a rich past to tap into to create original productions with an international reach, says the report.

SHCO's latest production of Our Common Homeland is just one of the many examples of productions that have flourished in recent years.

As the country's first large-scale modern Chinese orchestra founded in 1952, the SHCO has been a pioneer in the modernization of traditional music in China. In recent years, the company has dedicated itself to "presenting Chinese music with an international vision and a contemporary style," says Luo.

"We have read about imperial orchestras comprising 100 people in the Tang dynasty (618-907), but we know nothing about how they performed or were structured," he says.

"We have to create new forms and acoustic presentations of Chinese music relevant to the age we live in."

To achieve this goal, the SHCO has been commissioning compositions from international artists. For example, the SHCO premiered German composer Christian Jost's symphony production Shanghai Odyssey in 2017. Meanwhile, Li Bochan was commissioned to create Hero, a Chinese symphony based on characters in Chinese mythology. The symphony premiered in December.

Among the most successful repertoires of the SHCO is a production named New Oriental Chinese Music Scene which was created in 2016. The production consists of commissioned pieces from renowned artists such as Tan Dun and Zhao Jiping, as well as young local composers like Huang Lei and Han Wenhe.

The concert embarked on a 20-day tour of Europe last year, covering the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Germany. It also traveled to Mexico where it was praised for having "an extraordinary level of interpretation" and an elegant style by local audiences.

Later this year, a chamber music arrangement of New Oriental will be performed at the Chinese embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, to celebrate China's 70th National Day.

As well as the SHCO, other performing groups from Shanghai have also completed successful international tours.

In 2016, the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe staged a series of productions called Four Dreams by Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) to mark the 400th anniversary of his death. That year, the troupe held 60 performances all over the world.

In 2018, the productions toured Austria and Russia and even participated in the Performing Arts Festival in Berlin, Germany, winning high praise from audiences and critics alike. The productions also received a special Magnolia Award earlier this year. The organizers of the award praised the performers for "promoting Chinese culture overseas and introducing to the global theater world the unique charm of traditional Chinese opera".

While the SHCO and the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe introduced traditional and folk performing art forms to international audiences, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Shanghai Ballet have presented their creations to the West in ways that are already familiar to local audiences.

In January 2020, the Shanghai Ballet will make its debut at the Lincoln Center in New York city, performing four shows of Swan Lake, which features the world's largest ensemble of 48 performers dressed as swans. There will be live music accompaniment by the orchestra of New York City Ballet.

"Our successful performances will help to introduce the cultural brand of Shanghai to the mainstream theater world," says Xin Lili, director of the Shanghai Ballet.

Originally known as the Shanghai Public Band, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra was the first orchestra set up in China. Its first documented performance took place in Shanghai's Lyceum Theatre in 1879.

Throughout its history, the orchestra has hosted many maestro musicians and conductors. Since the appointment of Yu Long as music director in 2009 and the launch of the SSO's new concert hall in 2014, the orchestra has taken further steps in the international music scene, building long-term strategic relationships with some of the best-known music institutions in the world, such as the New York Philharmonic. The Lucerne Festival Orchestra also made its premiere in Shanghai at the SSO Hall during the China Shanghai Arts Festival.

Last year, Yu Long and the SSO signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon to become the first Chinese conductor and orchestra to join the world's oldest and most renowned classical music label.

This August, to mark its 140th anniversary, the SSO will embark on a global tour which will take the 100-strong orchestra to the United States, Switzerland, Germany and the UK, where it will make its debut at the BBC Proms. The program includes pieces by Mozart, Prokofiev, Dvorak and contemporary Chinese composer Chen Qigang's work Wu Xing (The Five Elements).

"When the company makes plans for international projects, it does so with the mantra that quality is better than quantity," says Wang Xiaoting, the program manager of the SSO.

"We only want to make international collaborations of great influence."