Yang Yani, a young Chinese PiPa performer, has been studying Chinese PiPa since a young age.

 

Academic Background:

During the undergraduate years from 2011 to 2015, Yang Yani studied at the Chinese Sichuan Conservatory of Music, majoring in Chinese PiPa performance and self-studying Chinese zhongruan instrument performance.

 

In the master's program from 2016 to 2019, Yang Yani studied at the Chinese Yunnan Arts University, majoring in Chinese PiPa performance. During the master's program, she successfully held two personal PiPa solo concerts. As an outstanding graduate student representative, she accompanied her mentor on a visit to the Belarusian State Academy of Music, where she performed as a solo performer and received praise. She has also received national and provincial awards in plucked-string instrument competitions, both as a solo performer and as a member of an ensemble.

 

Ph.D. Candidate: Yang Yani is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Musicology at Krirk University in Thailand. Her main research interests include music archaeology, music iconography, and ethnomusicology. Her doctoral research focuses on the analysis of PiPa(lute) musical instrument images found in grottoes, tombs, murals, and carvings dating from the Chinese Northern Wei to Tang dynasties, as well as like PiPa musical instrument images along the Silk Road during that period.

 

At this international symposium, Yang Yani hopes to present an image analysis of female PiPa performers in the YunGang Grottoes during the Northern Wei period and in murals unearthed from GuoXing's tomb during the Tang dynasty. This will be done from three aspects: heaven, underground world, and the real world. By doing so, she aims to explore the accessibility of music and allow participants to understand the scenarios of female musicians of different identities participating in musical performances during that period and their role in promoting the inheritance of Chinese PiPa music culture. Additionally, the selected images also reflect the musical exchange and integration between different ethnicities and cultures. Today, the diversity of PiPa music performance styles and musical languages in China is closely related to the cultural exchanges among different ethnicities and cultures at that time. Therefore, it serves as a reminder that for sustainable development of music, musicians need to value the communication between different musical cultures and be receptive to foreign musical cultures, which can then be absorbed and integrated with the native music culture. Moreover, during the presentation within the little minutes time limit, Yang Yani intends to perform live on the PiPa, allowing participants to experience the diverse musical expression of Chinese PiPa.