Xiamen University contest brings new life to the ocarina

The “Golden Ocarina Cup” national ocarina competition successfully concluded recently. It was a new event initiated by Xiamen University for the development of clay musical instruments.

The competition was hosted by Xiamen University, as well as jointly organized by the College of Arts in Xiamen University and the Fujian Nationalities Orchestra Society.

A contestant plays the ocarina. [Photo/chinanews.com]

In an effort to showcase the achievements made in ocarina professional development in China and explore new ways of teaching and performing clay musical instruments, the competition attracted more than 1,000 professional and amateur contestants from the Chinese mainland, Macao, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as overseas Chinese from the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea. The youngest contestant among them was only five years old, and the oldest was nearly 75 years old.

Liu She, a judge of the competition and dean of the College of Arts of Xiamen University, said that the competition was authoritative and influential, serving as a pioneering and landmark professional competition for the ocarina.

“This was the event with the most groups since the development of the Chinese ocarina. In addition to the groups divided by age, it included new groups like the ocarina micro class group, the MV group of clay musical instruments, the professional group, and the xun (an ancient egg-shaped holed wind instrument) performing group,” said Zhao Liang, director of the organizing committee and president of the Fujian Nationalities Orchestra Society.

The judges evaluate the works online. [Photo/chinanews.com]

The competition was conducted online, including the submission process and the evaluation of works. To ensure an objective and fair competition, each judge was required to give scores independently according to contestant’s intonation, technique, emotion, music processing, performance effect, as well as overall integrity. There were three to five judges in each group, and the average score was taken as the final score of the contestant.

Xiamen University’s attachment to clay musical instruments began in 1986 when Zhao Liangshan, who had been working on repairing ancient clay musical instruments, began his teaching career at Xiamen University.

After years of development, the College of Arts in Xiamen University set up its first xun (including the ocarina) major in 2016, opening up a new mode for training talents of intangible cultural heritage items in universities.