Raising their voices

One of the canceled concerts was to be a performance by the Inner Mongolia Youth Choir, which was set to perform traditional Mongolian ethnic folk songs, such as Beautiful Grassland-My Home, Father's Grassland and Mother's River, Four Seas and the Hanggal Concerto.

"The choir sings a cappella-with no conductor and no accompaniment," says the choir's leader, conductor Yalungerile. A member of Mongolian ethnic group, she graduated from the department of composition and conducting at Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1987 and later obtained her master's degree as a conductor from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1998.

In 1987, the conductor founded the Inner Mongolia Youth Choir, which is dedicated to promoting folk music of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Besides adapting local folk songs into a choral singing style, the conductor also gathers Mongolian ethnic musicians to display traditional Mongolian ethnic musical instruments, such as sihu (a four-stringed bowed instrument) and morin khuur (horse-headed fiddle).

"We travel around the region looking for singers and musicians, especially talented children. Since 2007, every three years we recruit new students to our chorus to train them as professional musicians," says Yalungerile.

The other two shows that have been canceled include a performance by seven ethnic group choruses, that were supposed to perform under the baton of conductor Hu Manxue on August 10, and a performance by Gong Linna on August 15, who planned to perform songs based on Chinese poems that depict the 24 solar terms-the traditional Chinese calendar that summarizes different seasonal phenomena-which were written by her German husband, songwriter Robert Zollitsch.