Cat No CD450377

o Tian Guo (‘Heavenly Land’) are an unusual instrumental duo : Chinese ‘guzheng’ player Xu Fengxia and Austrian pianist Giselher Smekal. The ‘guzheng’ is a string instrument with an especially large range of notes.

o The material on this album, mainly composed by Smekal or co-composed, are absorbing ‘conversation’ pieces with an approach that combines contemporary classical, traditional Chinese music and jazz improvisation.

o Fengxia was born in Shanghai in 1963, and studied string instruments, but was also bass player in the first all-female Chinese rock band. She moved to Germany in 1991. Smekal was born in Tyrol in 1945 and became well-known as a composer for contemporary chamber music, before turning to improvised music, and non-European musical cultures.