Ms. Li is a Taiwanese sheng player previously performing in the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. With a keen aptitude for integrating the sheng into various artistic forms, she is currently exploring innovative ways to broaden her repertoire as an instrumentalist. She was a member of the Ka Dao Yin improvisation ensemble, whose album “Slow” was awarded the 25th Taiwan Golden Melody Award for Traditional Arts for Best Crossover Album. In 2022, she was invited to perform in an improvisation workshop at the IRCAM’s ManiFeste Music Festival in France. That same year, she also received the Asian Cultural Council's 2023 New York Fellowship. Recent years have also seen her travel and work between Taiwan and Europe.
Her performance this evening features a rendition of the classic sheng piece "Jin Diao." Chinese sheng player and composer Yan Haideng drew on personal experiences to write the song and imbued it with a strong local flavor of the Shanxi province. To play it well, a musician needs to have a high degree of technical expertise.
Ms. Li will also collaborate with three artists, Cheng Ko-chun, Wang Ying-Kai, and Tseng Kuan-Tung, to present one of the most iconic scenes in Peking Opera, "San Cha Kou"(Crossroads). Actors skilled in martial arts often excel in bringing this scene to life. Like performing a pantomime, they rely solely on breath control to synchronize their movements and gestures, striving to give the audience an exhilarating and highly satisfying viewing experience.