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summertime
Joined: 16 Dec 2004 Posts: 923
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:50 am Post subject: Pittsford native a star — in China |
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Pittsford native a star — in China
Pittsford singer rises to top of film, music in parents' homeland
Jeff Spevak
Staff music critic
(November 8, 2007) — As a résumé writer, Leehom Wang is a flop.
"He was telling me, 'Oh yeah, I'm in this little movie,'" recalled his friend and former vocal teacher, Jodi Zajkowski, 38, of Fairport.
Yet that movie is hardly an afterthought when it's directed by the same fellow who gave us Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. "I said, 'ANG LEE?'," Zajkowski shrieked. "Are you kidding me?"
Wang may be lacking in self-promotional skills, but little else appears to be languishing in this Pittsford native, the son of Chinese immigrants, who has become a huge pop star a half a world away.
In Lust, Caution, an espionage thriller set during the 1942 Japanese occupation of Shanghai, Wang plays a drama student turned would-be assassin. It is finishing up its local run tonight at The Little Theatre as well as Pittsford Plaza Cinema, where, Zajkowski notes, Wang often attended movies as a teenager.
But it is as a pop star that the 31-year-old Wang is internationally recognized. Wang has won four Golden Melody Awards, the Chinese equivalent of the Grammys. He was 22 when he was named Best Producer and Best Male Vocalist in 1999, the youngest performer to ever win those honors.
The prolific Wang has released 10 albums in Mandarin, two in Japanese, been a part of numerous film soundtracks and recorded duets with Tony Bennett, Kenny G and Julio Iglesias Jr. His 2005 release Heroes of Earth sold 1 million copies in its first 10 days, with the supporting tour setting a record for Shanghai Arena, selling out 80,000 seats.
His latest album, Change Me, came out this summer, with themes that include ecology and global warming. His musical curiosity has previously included traveling to remote villages in Tibet, China and Mongolia, loaded down with equipment, in order to record the indigenous music.
For this loaded résumé, Goldsea Asian American Daily recently put Wang on a list of "The 80 Most Inspiring Asian-Americans of All Time." Move over, Mao Zedong and Bruce Lee.
"I really am not surprised," said Harold McAulliffe, 63, of Pittsford, Zajkowski's father and Wang's music teacher at Pittsford-Sutherland High School. "In my 40-plus year career, I would have to say he is the single-most talented student I have ever had the pleasure of teaching. He has such a positive personality, such an eagerness to please and a want to get ahead. I don't think a lot of people understand, he is to China and Taiwan what Leonardo DiCaprio is in the U.S.
"But he's very modest about it, even though he is probably the biggest heartthrob over there. He's always faithfully keep us posted in what he was doing. He always remembers where he came from, and very grateful from what he got from a teacher."
"He's still just Leehom," said Zajkowski, adding that his family still lives in Pittsford. (Wang and his parents were unavailable to comment for this story.) "He comes home and just sort of blends into the fabric of the community. I think he likes coming home because no one knows who he is."
Now making his home in China, Wang went from an early career of singing R&B-influenced, romantic Chinese ballads to having created a spectacularly intoxicating — bewildering, almost — hybrid combining pop with Chinese opera and folk, western rock, Tibetan music and Chinese drums, with Wang rapping in Mandarin. It is a new sound in China.
"I never suspected that he would become a hip-hop artist," Zajkowski said. "I always thought he would go into classical."
Wang, well aware he's subjugating a racial epithet in much the same way black hip-hop uses derogative slang, has labeled his most-recent sound "Chinked-out." The title track of Heroes of Earth fuses a sample of Peking Opera and an even older Chinese opera tradition, the 500-year-old kunqu, with Chinese-American rapper Jin and his own rapping in what amounts to a mission statement:
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071108/NEWS01/711080361/1002/NEWS |
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summertime
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summertime
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summertime
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summertime
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Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 6:11 pm Post subject: |
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Leehom (english songs) - singing with the Gospellers - looks like they're having fun -
not quite sure what happened on that last note though . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Lm6eTovso&NR=1
Wang Lee Hom Chinglish Joke! - in English - Xmas Concert @ SF-12/23/2007
video not the best quality, but . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF87oAoLbuk&NR=1
Last edited by summertime on Mon Jul 14, 2008 10:48 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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