The Chinese Red Chamber Orchestra took the audience in Ice auditorium through centuries of traditional plucked sting music on Oct. 22.

Mei Han, Guilian Liu, Zhimin Yu, and Geling Jiang performed pieces dating back to 930 A.D. to modern day contemporary works.

The first of the pieces was titled “Girls Picking Flowers.” The melody uses contemporary techniques to illustrate a sense of springtime. Red Chamber member Zhimin Yu wrote this piece.

The next piece was one of 25 ancient pipa scores that were found in the Dun Huang mural cave in northwestern China.

The score “Qing Beiyue” is the one they chose to play and Han said that this score was lost until the 20th century. This score was also believed to be court music from the Tang Dynasty.

“Dao Chuilian” was the following score and it was an arrangement of the piece from the Guangdong province in southern China.

The scores following are traditional plucked string music. “Sunny Spring, White Snow” comes from a well-known pipa melody.

The original melody is called a mother tune, which means that the original melody was composed in way that over time people added on to the pieces and improvised different sounds. The original melody was turned into different pieces in different regions of China.

The piece “High Mountain, Flowing Water” comes from Peng Baban, a folk chamber music genre form the Shandong province of northern China.

It requires that musicians play different variations of the baban simultaneously. This demonstrated the structure of traditional Chinese music.

The next piece is “Spring in the Heavenly Mountain.” This score is a contemporary composition that is based on Uyghur melodies from southwestern China.

“Mountain song” is a piece that integrated the techniques of a guitar.

“Madly Riding” is the improvisation of two composers. It is an up-beat tempo World Jazz blend tempo that has gone through a number of arrangements.

“Datun Jelut” is a traditional piece from Northern Borneo, Malaysia. It is originally played on the sape boat lute of Kenyah and Kayan people.

The piece “A Dream of Africa” is inspired by African drumming and kalimba music, which interlocks patterns between the players.

The final piece of the night titled “Dance of the Yao People” comes from the dance music of the Yao people.

Mei Han is recognized internationally as one of the leading players of the Chinese zheng. Han has created many pieces of new music and even has two Juno nominated CDs. She has performed with orchestras in China and Canada and has been featured on national television, with even radio specials.

Guilian Lui is a celebrated pipa lute masters. She was the winner of the Chinese National Instrumental Music Competition in 1989. Her expressiveness and technique were praised by renowned conductors Herbert von Karajan and Seiji Ozawa. Lui was also featured in the Oscar winning documentary From Mao to Mozart- Isaac Stern in China in 1979.

Zhimin Yu is one of the most sought after Chinese musicians in Vancouver for playing the ruan lute virtuoso. She moved to Canada in 1989 and has performed for the Vancouver Chinese Ensemble, the Silk Road Ensemble, and many other cross-cultural projects.

Geling Jiang is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist. She graduated from the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. Jiang joined the Chime Bell Ensemble where she recorded numerous radio broadcast, television programs, films, and has performed tours in the United States, Japan, and Singapore.