Shanghai TV show with Avril Lavigne & I airs this weekend
- with Zhang Jun
For this show I sang in 3 languages but did Avril Lavigne sing Mandarin? Did she even sing onstage? Well, she was there onstage but you’ll have to read on to find out what she did. For the 2nd year in a row I was delighted to perform onstage for a joint-production by Fairchild and Shanghai TV, this time for a Countdown to Shanghai Expo 2010 show. It airs across Canada on Sunday, May 24 at 8 pm. I’m told it’s already aired in Shanghai, to an audience of over 200 million.
The Countdown show is meant to be a fusion of eastern and western cultures, and some of China’s best artists came to Vancouver to perform. And since east-west fusion is just what I love to do, I was especially honoured to be invited not only to sing but to also perform a duet with one of those very artists, Zhang Jun. He has devoted himself since the age of 12 to the art of Kunqu Opera, known as the “mother” of all operas; it has the oldest history – we’re talking 600 years! No wonder it’s listed with UNESCO world heritage.
- backstage with Zhang
Zhang, whose English name is Jeffrey, was great to work with and I was relieved we were able to communicate using a combination of both English and Chinese. We sang a medley of Mandarin & Cantonese songs (not opera) but the tough part came during rehearsal when I was faced with correcting his pronunciation of one word…I mean, who the heck am I (!!) to be teaching ANYONE Cantonese – I’m a made-in-Canada Prairie gal who’s never even studied the language! I shared my dilemma with Betty the wardrobe whiz and she laughed at me. Can’t blame her, it is pretty amusing, but I actually struggled with this! In the end I realized this is the way one learns a language, and heaven knows I’ve made my share of mistakes (eg. on my first trip to Hong Kong I tried to show off my bartering skills in the night market only to find out I was offering to pay more than they were asking for…hey, no one said Chinese is easy). In the end, I shared, we sang, and all went smoothly.
For my soIo song which followed I was to do any uptempo English song as I’d have dancers backing me up – but trying to choose one from all the songs in my repertoire proved even more challenging than learning the new Mandarin song for the show. I thought long n hard and decided to go with the remix version of Gordon Lightfoot’s gorgeous “If You Could Read My Mind”. This has long been a favourite song of mine from one of Canada’s national treasures and I wanted to showcase our cultural “bridge” afterall – and what better way than with the music of a masterful songwriter and iconic folk singer and btw he’s still performing live at 70 years+!
- Avril Lavigne
Wish I could say the same for Avril. I really was hoping she’d blow me away, perhaps singing some Mandarin in her song “Girlfriend” (as mentioned in my last LEBlog). No such luck - she didn’t sing at all and just came out and interacted a bit with the Expo mascot and emcees onstage. Oh, she was also named Canadian Ambassador of Expo 2010, but for my $ I’d rather be entertained by Canada’s newly-appointed commissioner general of Expo 2010, Dashan, aka Mark Rowswell - you’ve got to hear this guy! We worked together on Beijing TV years ago and not only can he speak Mandarin faster than most locals there, but he’s also hilarious. Hmm, I’m noticing a funny connection here – we 3 are all from Ottawa, go figure! So where’s my invite to Shanghai Expo…?!?
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