Watching Chi Chen perform at Tateuchi Hall last Saturday felt like stepping into a private recital in her living room. Wearing a flame-red gown, she sat on a large wooden bench on a stage decorated with potted trees and Chinese screens, telling the story of each cello piece to the audience in both English and Chinese.
Her performance at the Community School of Music and Arts, entitled “One Cello, One World,” featured transcribed Chinese melodies as well as her own original compositions.
Each song’s theme connected to nature, and sometimes that connection went beyond the melody to the form, such as in Chen’s original, “The Lingering Scent of Tea.” She composed this song as a canon that would build up and fade out gradually, the tune lingering in the audience’s minds.
Nature and all of the senses play a role in everything Chen does. In teaching private cello lessons, she reaches beyond sound to teach the music.
“I talk to them in terms of don’t just play the notes, play the landscape of the notes,” Chen said. “I ask, ‘What did that smell like? Did you see any colors?”
She encourages her students, especially the younger ones, to mark up their scores with colored pencils to help them understand the music through more than just their ears.
This multi-sensory method exemplifies Chen’s approach to life. She is not just a cellist. She is one half of UrbanChi Music, Design & Movement, a concept that couples her talents and those of her husband, Keith Urban, to provide interior and graphic design services, and yoga, dance and music lessons.
“If you include more of the senses and include more of the person, they improve more quickly,” Urban said.
UrbanChi, which the pair started when they moved to Mountain View six years ago from New York City, has a small office in the back of La Petite Chaise on Castro Street.
Like his wife, Urban also combines art and design in his life. A dancer who founded the Toronto Dance Theatre, he now teaches yoga, ballet and modern dance at Stanford, Foothill College and other locations. He is also a graphic and Web designer and a choreographer.
Chen is also a practitioner of feng shui, the ancient Chinese method of arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment. She incorporates feng shui techniques into interior design, decorating homes for Realtors and homeowners hoping to sell or freshen their house. Changing the feeling of where you live, Chen believes, can change your life.
“Personal things can be affected by it. Your career can be affected by it,” she said.
During the past year, Chen focused her musical efforts on “One Cello, One World,” after receiving a grant from the Peninsula Community Foundation. A year ago, she began to transcribe Chinese songs for cello so she could eventually record a CD and share her work with the community. Saturday’s concert represented the second phase of her project.
The simple, somber melodies transported the audience to Taiwan to visualize Chen’s upbringing as the child of professional musicians. In addition to writing several original songs for the show, she transcribed Chinese pop songs by ear and created parts for multiple cellos, without any formal training in music composition.
In preparation for the concert, she recorded all of the tracks herself, and then played along with the recording during the show. But this was no cello karaoke — the blending of her live sound with the recorded tracks of her playing gave a layered, full sound that filled CSMA’s Tateuchi Hall and showcased the full range of the instrument from its hearty baritone to its delicate soprano.
The concert’s finale brought Chen’s fourteen cello students to the stage to perform “Spring Fantasy” alongside her — a two-part song that caused the enthusiastic audience to request an encore.
Chen will release her CD, “One Cello, One World” this summer. A list of Urban’s upcoming dance and yoga classes is available at www.urbanchi.com.
E-mail Molly Tanenbaum at mtanenbaum@mv-voice.com
