There are influences and there are influences. I’ve been influenced in some sense by everything I’ve ever heard, and especially by the various phases of appreciation (and obsession) I’ve gone through. Nonetheless, some contributors stand out in that their influence has become a vital part of how I play the qin, recognizable and indispensable. In the world of Chinese music, while I’ve taken cues from everything from pastoral ocarinas to resurrected bronze bell ensembles, it’s the qin players who dominate.

1. First I have to put Wu Wenguang 吳文光 (1946-), who has done more than any other single musician to shape my playing. WWG has gotten some other mentions on this site; check there for specific points about his style. What I most admire about his renditions is their “searching” quality, the sense that he is feeling his way through each note and experiencing it anew, no matter how many times he has played a given piece. His playing encompasses astonishing extremes of light and heavy, bright and dark, deliberate and headlong; he has been called a “modern literatus”, and this captures well his simultaneous innovative spirit and deep traditionalism. WWG is something of a “dark horse” player in today’s qin world, eremitically inclined and so less visible than other players of comparable ability. Nonetheless, those “in the know” tend to agree on the sophistication and intensity of his playing, and Gong Yi himself (!) is reported to have sought WWG’s instruction in recent years.

2. Then there’s everybody’s favorite, Li Xiangting 李祥霆 (1940-), perhaps the most famous qin player alive. You can learn all about his biography and accomplishments on many other sites. There appear to be two rather different LXTs—the traditional LXT and the improvising LXT. LXT’s renderings of traditional pieces are singular in their strength, angularity, and even ferocity. Indeed, at first I was turned off by his playing, thinking that it violated the subtlety I prized in qin music. While I still find some of his decisions puzzling, and am not sure about his reasons for playing in this way, I have warmed up to his style considerably. LXT’s characteristic forest of energy conceals tonal, rhythmic, and inflectional intricacies fully in line with the best the tradition has to offer. Beyond his traditional work, LXT has broken entirely new ground in his gradual cultivation of a sophisticated, flexible method for improvising on the qin. The results range from adequate to awe-inspiring. In the past five years LXT appears to be focusing on improvisation more and more, and I see much of the “future of the qin” in his efforts. Although I admire and study closely his improvisations, in one area they seem to fall short: that of developing a formal framework for the generation of melodies, something sorely needed in Chinese music. Such a framework would ensure greater consistency and help avoid repetitiousness and unstructuredness.

I’m afraid there’s no number 3 as yet. I have been brought to my knees by many qin masters, both past (Guan Pinghu, Wu Jinglüe, Zha Fuxi, Zhang Ziqian, Liu Shaochun, Wu Zhaoji, Xu Yuanbai, Yao Bingyan) and present (Gong Yi, Cheng Gongliang, Xie Daoxiu, Dai Xiaolian, Zeng Chengwei, Wang Huade). Each has something interesting and unique to contribute, and I plan on assimilating them systematically at various later times. Recently, however, I have been focusing quite concertedly on plumbing the styles of WWG and LXT. I see these as a kind of “hard center” around which the rest can accrete, and which new trends must infect to take hold. These two by themselves cover a lot of range, with WWG contributing mantic vision, combinatoric precision, and elusive softness (among other features!), while LXT contributes athleticism, hard edges, and of course that marvelous improvisational sensibility.