Erhu Virtuoso Feifei Yang Used to Hate Her Instrument. Now She Cannot Image Life Without It
Feifei Yang is an award-winning musician who sings and plays Jazz and Asian-fusion erhu – a two-stringed Chinese instrument with a sound most similar to the violin. Having trained professionally in the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in China, Feifei has since won the 2017 Global Music Award for Female Vocalist & Popular Music and established herself as a versatile performer in New York City.
Her recent live performance at The Cutting Room in New York City featured her jazz trio with music rooted in the 1930s Shanghai pop style. Switching between playing the erhu and singing, she easily captivated the audience’s attention with her musical versatility and stage presence. And her instrument the erhu, considered exotic and relatively unknown in the US, played a surprisingly prominent role in her jazz trio for an instrument that is characteristically soft and mellow.
Feifei Yang sings live at The Cutting Room in New York City.
“I hated [the erhu] to death, like, oh my god, when can this instrument break so I can toss it!”
She didn’t always love the erhu, however. Growing up, she loved to sing and dance, but only selected the erhu after being recruited by the school orchestra. I was curious if she did fall in love with her instrument at that time and the answer was an emphatic “No!” The resentment for having to practice hours on end can still be felt. Laughing at it now, she recalls how much she hated the instrument to death and how she thought about “When can this instrument break so I can toss it!” True enough, the struggles and sacrifices musicians make to perfect their craft are universal. But not everyone is so willing to share as honestly as Feifei did.
Feifei Yang with her Erhu, live at The Cutting Room in New York City.
Years later, those hours spent practicing have paid off. Feifei has established a strong presence in China as well as New York. Thankfully, she now feels married to her instrument (though there’s a funny bit about that in the video as well) and cannot imagine separating from it in this lifetime. That’s music to my ears because I personally love the erhu (watch Feifei give me a mini lesson at the end of the video) for its tenderness–which is eerily similar to the sound of humans crying–and cannot wait to hear another performance by Feifei.
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