French and Chinese musicians will perform a variety of concerts from classical and opera to contemporary and fusion genres.

French director Jean Louis Pichon will lead the performance of Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers" under the baton of Zhang Guoyong at the Shanghai Opera House. The cast includes Chinese tenor Zhang Jianyi, soprano Xu Xiaoying and baritone Yang Xiaoyong.

In Beijing, conducted by artistic director Tan Lihua, Beijing Symphony Orchestra will give a concert at the Forbidden City Concert Hall on May 21, playing Berlioz and Saint-Saens' pieces with 28-year-old French organ player Erwan Le Prado.

In the second half of the concert, the orchestra will play bits of the Chinese opera "Peony Pavilion" by French composer Hacene Larbi. Chinese director Ning Chunyan directed the play, which premiered in Paris in 2001.

"It's interesting to play music based on a Chinese story but composed by a foreigner ... It combines some of the most trendy techniques in symphonic composition with a few Chinese traditional elements," said Tan.

Chinese musicians will also collaborate with French artists to fuse and improvise music in live concerts.

Wang Lei and French dub band Hightone will perform in Beijing on May 19, Shanghai on May 20 and Guangzhou on May 21.

After a 2004 show at one of the biggest summer festivals in France, Eurockeennes de Belfort, the artistic team of Wang and Hightone has become a phenomenon called "Wangtone."

Chinese flutist Li Shan, 28, will give combined fusion and traditional concerts with French musician Mars (Olivier Nestelhut) who plays the traditional Chinese two-stringed instrument erhu in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Xi'an, Dalian and Guangzhou.

Mars fell in love with the erhu when he visited Shanghai in 1992. During that trip, he bought a Chinese erhu and began to practise the instrument on his own.

The Parisian harmonica virtuoso Jean Jacques Milteau, 56, will pair up with Chinese saxophone players Jin Hao and Du Yinjiao to give blue jazz concerts in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Guangzhou.

Pascal Contet will play the accordion along with Wu Wei playing the sheng in Xi'an, Chengdu, Wuhan and Shanghai.

More than 4,500 years separate the origins of these two instruments, and yet some sounds of the accordion sound like those of the sheng.

Wu and Contet, who met in 2003 at the Royaumont Abbey, discovered a common path of restoring the image of their instruments and working toward contemporary creation.

(China Daily April 21, 2006)