Canada’s Red Chamber is a musical group that plays songs from the Tang Dynasty — that’s A.D. 618 to 907 — and performs jazz, blues and contemporary tunes on ancient instruments.
The group features four Chinese-born performers, each of whom are known as a virtuoso of her respective ancient instrument.
They play a liu qin, a small teardrop lute; a sheng, a Chinese zither; a pipa, a large teardrop lute; a sanxian, or Chinese banjo; and a ruan, a Chinese moon guitar.
They start with a repertoire of rare traditional Chinese “Plucked String” songs. From there the music moves outward to encompasses several genres. They play bluegrass, jazz and other string band arrangements including Balkan and Gypsy jazz.
A video of Red Chamber, “Redgrass” with bluegrass mandolin luminary John Reischman, became a sensation on YouTube, American roots blended with traditional Chinese music.
The Red Chamber quartet, based in Vancouver, B.C., is led by Mei Han, a musician who is celebrated for her zither playing.
She is joined by Guilian Liu, one of the world’s premiere Chinese lute players, Zhimin Yu, the only ruan virtuoso in North America, and Geling Jiang, an award-winning multi-instrumentalist.
The show is at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Edmonds Center for the Arts, 410 Fourth Ave. N, Edmonds.
Tickets are $15 to $30. Call 425-275-9595 or go to www.ec4arts.org.
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