“Never seen anything else like [Shen Yun]. It’s one of the most elegant things I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m a musician, but we’re still very visual creatures, and so I get very, very preoccupied with all the color and costumes, and these beautiful, beautiful movements.”
“What really jumps out at me is the Chinese instruments. I hear the orchestra playing, and it’s first-rate orchestra playing, everything is right on the money, but then you hear these amazing sounds coming that I don’t get a chance to hear all the time—the erhu and the pipa, it brings the flavor that I don’t hear.”
“The erhu, it’s almost like a violin, isn’t it? It has even more focused sound. So it has this extremely lean, almost athletic …”
“The erhu, the ornamentation and the decoration, the decorative quality of the line is something that we don’t do on the violin, and I don’t know if I could do it.”
“There'll be some very brave violinists who try to replicate that sound. It’s very difficult to do. But that’s why it strikes me so much, because it’s so much common ground.”
