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East Meets West in the Concert Hall: Asians and Classical Music in the Century of Imperialism, Post-Colonialism, and Multiculturalism

The classical music field is experiencing dramatic changes wrought by the social, political, and economic trends of the postmodern age. Even as critics in the West express doubt over the continuing vitality of classical music in the face of shrinking orchestra budgets, aging and dwindling audiences, and sinking record sales, Asians and Asian Americans have invaded the conservatory and the concert hall in numbers that are impossible to ignore.' In September 2002, two Asians, 28-year-old Xia Zhang from Beijing and 31-year-old Bundit Ungrangsee from Bangkok, shared the honor of winning the top prize in the inaugural contest of the Maazel/Vilar Conductors' Competition. The young Chinese pianist Lang Lang is the latest of a string of Asian child prodigy sensations-following violinists Midori and Sarah Chang-to grace the classical music stage. A recent New York Times article about the Chinese bass Hao Jiang Tian, then playing Timur in Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, noted: "Western classical music is conserved and revitalized by a new generation of Asian performers and composers" (Lipsyte and Morris 2002). Yet even as the roster of prominent Asian musicians steadily grows, sociopolitical factors conspire to maintain "universalist," i.e., Europeanist, discourses of classical music, thus rendering Asian participation in this cultural practice unnatural or less than salutary. Writers on other creative endeavors have been examining analogous intersections of Eastern and Western power and culture for some time now. In such influential texts as Orientalism and Culture and