With four movements, the concerto conducted by John Sharpley of the United States is cyclic and bustling with complex texture. There are fundamental, and generally submerged, musical materials that permeate through the work. The orchestra and the zheng's tuning are delicately intertwined.

Sharpley scored the 25-minute concerto for the Canadian-Chinese zheng player Han Mei, soloist at the concert.

The concerto's origin came about a few years ago, when Sharpley first met Han and her husband Randy Raine-Reusch at a music festival in Sarawak, Malaysia.

"I was deeply inspired by the couple's extraordinary music-making," said Sharpley.

Recognized internationally, a virtuoso on the zheng, Han presents music deeply rooted in over 2,000 years of Chinese culture mixed with ground breaking contemporary styles.

After learning ballet and violin briefly in her younger years, Han turned to the zheng when she was 10.

"Before my first zheng teacher, renowned zheng master Gao Zicheng showed me the instrument, I had never seen it. But after listening to him play the piece 'Lofty Mountains and Flowing Rivers,' I was fascinated by the sound and immediately asked Gao to teach me," she recalled.

That began Han's exploration of the zheng, which spanned more than 20 years in China. She studied with a number of famous zheng masters including Gao and Zhang Yan. From the age of 16, she began playing as a featured soloist with her performances broadcast on national radio in China.

"Though my technique was improving quickly during those years, I gradually sensed I was lacking a deeper understanding of the music," she said. "I couldn't shake this feeling of emptiness and asked myself if I would just play these several zheng pieces for the rest of my life."

So she enrolled in a master's degree of Ethnomusicology at the Chinese Academy of Arts in 1993.

Her dedication took her to some 28 remote ethnic nationalities in Southwest China to collect folk songs.

In 1996, Han went to Canada for an ethnic music programme in the School of Music at the University of British Columbia.

She worked as a teaching assistant while performing Chinese music to Westerners.

"In Vancouver, I gradually found it a home for various people, languages and cultures. I could hear a fusion of music types and I realized how shallow my knowledge about music was," she said.

What is most meaningful to her music and life is that in Vancouver, she met Randy Raine-Reusch Randy, the composer and multi-instrumentalist, who became her husband in 2001.

An improvisational based composer, Raine-Reusch, 50, shows great interest in extending the boundaries of music. He has created distinct new performance styles on a number of instruments including Chinese zheng, Japanese ichigenkin (one-string zither) and the Thai khaen (16-reed bamboo mouth organ).

Raine-Reusch has also been heralded as a "dexterous multi-instrumentalist" due to his ability to play about 50 of his collected 600 world instruments.

The co-operation and romance blossomed one day in 1998. After hearing that Raine-Reusch was good at playing zheng, Han called him out of curiosity.

At first, he politely rejected her. Han later learned that Raine-Reusch had been eager to co-operate with some Chinese zheng players but was always met with a negative response. The players he asked could not fathom his musical style and preferred to only play Lofty Mountains and Flowing Rivers or Three Variations on the Theme of Plum Blossoms.

But Han was determined. Raine-Reusch finally invited Han to his home, where he played a CD of his jazz for her.

He had never expected that the Chinese woman would take to the music, "but she immediately understood and enjoyed it," said Raine-Reusch.

Then he asked her to play the zheng. "Don't use your mind and forget the melody, just play with your feelings," he inspired her and she played for more than 15 minutes.

The amazing result was "I felt the wall which had stood in front of me suddenly crumble," she described the sensation, "I inhaled the fresh air and saw a bright broad world which I had never seen before."

They appreciated each other's talents.

Since their meeting, Han and Raine-Reusch have redefined the zheng, and challenged the world of traditional Chinese music in general.

Together they have invented new tunings, developed new fingering techniques, expanded old structures and created radical new forms of expression on this ancient instrument.

They have created a new repertoire, attempting to combine the Chinese musical traditions with those of world music and jazz.

Their first CD of zheng Distant Wind reached the top of the charts on the Canadian College Radio Charts, and was nominated for a Juno Award (Canadian Grammy) and two West Coast Music Awards.

They also often performed improvisational works with other artists at major international jazz festivals and concerts.

They have stepped from the past to the future, trying to construct exciting new forms of expression for the new millennium.

(China Daily February 28, 2003)