继2016年“乌托邦·异托邦——乌镇国际当代艺术邀“英乐留声·唱游天地 中英音乐人创作计划”是英国文化教育协会和英国PRS音乐基金会自2011年起在中国开展的英国音乐人采风和创作计划。 8年间，18位英国音乐人深入15座城市，通过4-6周的驻地探寻中国传统和当代音乐流变，与当地音乐人碰撞火花，为新作品积累素材和灵感。作为音乐使者，他们也把在中国的生活和创作经历介绍给英国观众，加深两国对彼此音乐和文化的理解。
在英国文化教育协会进入中国40周年之际，我们希望通过这一回顾展，从合作、创新、人文、实验和城市互动等多个角度呈现“英乐留声“的成果，展示中英两国立体而多元的音乐生态，以及在西方和东方、传统和当代音乐不断相遇、试探和交融的过程中，音乐创作者如何打破固有风格和思维模式，带来更为鲜活的声音和开放包容的文化视野。 音乐的创作过程通常是一个充满意外和转折的奇妙旅程，很多时候音乐人从一个既定地点出发，走向的却是全然未知的境域。“英乐无界”通过11部纪录片带领大家走进各位音乐人在中国的探索和奇遇，同时展示4位风格迥异的英国音乐人在驻地时与中国当地音乐人一起构思或联合创作的作品。他们在零距离碰撞和磨合过程中，学习彼此的音乐语汇，也在不断挑战和拓展自身对声音的认知边界。
Musicians in Residence, China is an innovative cultural exchange programme
led by the British Council with a view to encouraging musician development
and collaboration. It is supported by the PRS Foundation, the UK's leading charitable funder of new music and talent development, and a range
of partner organisations across Chinese second-tier cities.
In the last eight years, the programme has enabled eighteen British music creators from a variety of backgrounds to spend six weeks in one of fifteen different Chinese cities where they have been able to explore the evolution of traditional and contemporary music in China, work with local musicians, create new works and acquire new sources of inspiration. As music ambassadors, they have also taken the opportunity to share their first-hand experience of living and creating in China with UK audiences, and in so doing contribute to the conversation through which these two countries can better understand each other’s music and culture.
On the 40th anniversary of the British Council in China, we hope this retrospective exhibition will provide a chance to look back on each of these residencies and reflect on what they have achieved in terms of new collaborations, creations, experiments and cross-cultural relationships; a story of how,
within China and Britain’s rich musical landscape, encounters between East and West, as well as the traditional and the contemporary, have allowed curious and receptive creators to open up new spaces in terms of musical expression and offer a more open cultural perspective.
The process of creating music can often resemble a journey full of unanticipated
twists and turns, with musicians starting in one place and frequently ending up somewhere unexpected. These ten documentaries tell the stories of the explorations and encounters of each musician during their time in China and also, in the case of four of them, each working within starkly contrasting genres, present the work that is the result of their collaborations with local Chinese musicians. The documentaries demonstrate the way that these Chinese and British artists have influenced one another through their proximity and interactions, learning and responding to each other’s musical vocabulary to expand the horizons of their own relationship with sound.
In the last eight years, the programme has enabled eighteen British music creators from a variety of backgrounds to spend six weeks in one of fifteen different Chinese cities where they have been able to explore the evolution of traditional and contemporary music in China, work with local musicians, create new works and acquire new sources of inspiration. As music ambassadors, they have also taken the opportunity to share their first-hand experience of living and creating in China with UK audiences, and in so doing contribute to the conversation through which these two countries can better understand each other’s music and culture.
On the 40th anniversary of the British Council in China, we hope this retrospective exhibition will provide a chance to look back on each of these residencies and reflect on what they have achieved in terms of new collaborations, creations, experiments and cross-cultural relationships; a story of how,
within China and Britain’s rich musical landscape, encounters between East and West, as well as the traditional and the contemporary, have allowed curious and receptive creators to open up new spaces in terms of musical expression and offer a more open cultural perspective.
The process of creating music can often resemble a journey full of unanticipated
twists and turns, with musicians starting in one place and frequently ending up somewhere unexpected. These ten documentaries tell the stories of the explorations and encounters of each musician during their time in China and also, in the case of four of them, each working within starkly contrasting genres, present the work that is the result of their collaborations with local Chinese musicians. The documentaries demonstrate the way that these Chinese and British artists have influenced one another through their proximity and interactions, learning and responding to each other’s musical vocabulary to expand the horizons of their own relationship with sound.
