■ Reporter Jiang Fang
On the smoke willow painting bridge, under the wind curtain and green curtain, the moving melody slowly unfolds with the beautiful picture, and the layers of scenes and lighting effects create a freehand stage, girls from the Song and Golden Dynasties with low hanging buns and combed flowers, ladies from the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty wearing crowns and combs and shawls and long skirts, as if from the depths of history, musicians from Shanghai dressed in restored Song Dynasty costumes, bringing an ancient audio-visual feast to the audience in Suzhou.
At the Suzhou Bay Grand Theater on the shores of East Taihu Lake, the premiere of the concert "What is the Qin, Song, Water Cloud Return" of Zide Qin Club attracted a large number of fans. It is worth mentioning that after the performance, the WeChat group QR code lit up on the screen of the Suzhou Bay Grand Theater, inviting live music fans to scan the code to enter the group chat and share their impressions directly with the musicians. There are still a large queue in the theater at the end of the show - by sharing performance reviews on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, you will receive a box of self-developed armor balm. It turns out that many loyal fans of the piano club are guqin lovers, and the armor paste launched by their favorite orchestra is of course a precious "gift" that cannot be missed.
After the performance of Suzhou Bay Grand Theater, Zide Qin Club will also tour Wuxi, Ningbo, Hangzhou and other places, in the first half of this year, the Qin Club has confirmed 14 performances, touring eight cities in China. Not only are offline performances highly sought after by music fans in many places, but a series of creative Chinese style folk music short videos created by Zide Qin Club have accumulated nearly 5000 million views on all platforms at home and abroad. For example, on the B station, which is loved by young people, its videos have been viewed nearly 9000 million times; On YouTube, an overseas video platform, that number has even doubled — nearly <> million times. From offline performances to online platforms, what is the success code of Zideqin Club's breaking the circle and becoming popular at home and abroad? User thinking, bold creativity, rigorous research, countless details condense the explosive quality of this national style team.
Use user thinking to let the audience "unlock" a great post-performance experience
"What song do you most want to go online on the online platform? What is the neighborhood of the self-proclaimed piano club? What is your favorite instrument? Suggestions for this concert..." In the WeChat group, the reporter saw that the operator of the Zide Qin Club issued a series of group announcements, and also shared links to the stills of the performance on B station, Weibo, Xiaohongshu and other platforms. "Welcome to download (stills), forward, and send moments." "Welcome to scan the code and put forward valuable comments and suggestions." For the audience who purchased tickets for a performance, it is undoubtedly happy to get such a "after-sales" service in the WeChat group.
"Many viewers know about Zideqin Club because of our B station and Weibo account, and we have gradually updated creative short video content on Xiaohongshu, Douyin and other platforms in the past two years, and have gained good hits on social media at home and abroad. In our view, online platforms and offline concerts are important channels for sharing works with the audience. President Zhu Liyue said in an exclusive interview with reporters that in the era of new media, Zideqin Club is using Internet thinking to deeply cultivate the community operation of a performance group. As far as the performance is concerned, we think more about putting ourselves in the role of the audience, such as what information we hope to see in time after the performance, and we also hope to take care of the usage habits of users on different social platforms as much as possible. Bai Wuflaw, guqin player and head of new media of Zide Qin Club, said in an interview with reporters.
The small armor paste reveals the intentions of the piano club in operation, and the joint milk tea coupons are also loved by young music fans. "In the future, we will develop more peripheral products, and the release of 2-3 vinyl records is also planned." Zhu Liyue told reporters that the original intention of the piano club is actually very simple, "that is, to be kind to the audience, so that in addition to liking our works, everyone can also feel the attentive and humane side of our team, so as to get a better user experience in the self-satisfied piano club."
The attention to one needle and one thread is a professional all-round excellence
Not only the "after-sales" service of watching the performance, but also the self-de-qin club has made a lot of efforts in the preliminary publicity and performance content design. The reason why the piano club can make a splash with the antique shape created by the costume restoration team and the "moving ancient painting" created by the video production team is inseparable from the excellence of the entire team from costumes, makeup, performance styling, shooting to post-production.
Take this concert of "What is the Qin, Song and Water Cloud Return" as an example, the costumes in the poster and promotional video are completely unified with the offline performance. The makeup design of the musicians refers to many Song Dynasty murals, ancient paintings, written records, cultural relics and other materials. For example, in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty, ladies were dressed, and the cultural relics referenced were murals from Kaihua Temple. The woman wore her hair in a bun on the top of her hair, wore a gold crown and decorated it with a gold comb, and the whole bun was gorgeous and dignified. "There were fashionable clothing and hairstyles in every period, and the mid-Song Dynasty was no exception, and this bun with a crown and comb was a very trendy look at the time." Liu Rui, the person in charge of makeup of Zideqin Club and a member of the Chinese costume restoration team, introduced that the clothing inspiration of ladies' costumes in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty also came from the murals of Kaihua Temple, and the shirt was slightly pulled up with a large neckline, and the neckline was layered very three-dimensionally. This layered clothing makes the wearer look very luxurious, and the atmosphere does not lose the beauty of women. "In addition to the costumes of ladies in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty, as well as the costumes of girls in the Song and Golden Dynasties, and the civilian clothes of scribes in the late Northern Song Dynasty, in order to pursue better visual presentation, almost every costume of the musicians has references, and every stitch and thread is very exquisite." Liu Rui said.
The poster of "What is the Qin, Song, Water Cloud Return" is also interesting, not only burying many cultural elements, but also expressing the vision of the Zide Qin Society to give the ancient rhyme a new life. The scroll in the poster is very eye-catching, and it turns out to be a national treasure-level handscroll "Jieshi Tuan Youlan", which is the earliest existing guqin text score. "The guqin is one of the oldest plucked musical instruments in China and a representative instrument of the ancient scholar class; The ancients left behind a vast sea of heirloom guqin scores, which are very rare in folk music. The guqin has gone through at least 3500,<> years to get to today, and when it comes to our hands, how should the current generation inherit the guqin is worth pondering. As the "all-rounder" of the Zide Qin Club, artistic director Tang Bin not only serves as the director and composer of the "What is the Qin" series of concerts, but also the design concept of the poster "What is the Qin, Song and Water Clouds" poster. In Tang Bin's view, the name "What is the Qin" itself is a question and a search.
On the road of inheriting the guqin, different people have different ways. The different characters on the poster represent various people on the road to guqin research. For example, in the poster, there are old people who are obsessed with ancient piano scores; There are young people who can't find a way forward and use their mobile phones to navigate; There are people who doze off because they are bored; There are people watching the excitement..." And the character in the visual center of our poster is the guqin player in this series of concerts, dressed in Song Dynasty costumes, surfing on the arc of guqin scores, representing the self-expectation of the self-satisfied piano club: to be a trendsetter based on tradition. Tang Bin introduced.
If the "qin" of the Zide Qin Society originally referred to the guqin, then with the use of many Chinese and foreign musical instruments in the works of the Qin Society in recent years, the meaning of "qin" has not only referred to the guqin. For example, in the concert of "What is the Qin, Song and Water Cloud Return", the Zide Qin Club combined folk music and orchestral music in the performance, and specially invited the Budapest Symphony Orchestra to record accompaniment for six works: "Grape Fairy", "Manjiang Red", "Sleeping", "Huaihuang", "Pancang Wave" and "Guizhixiang". The fusion and collision of ancient music and symphony, and the sound of the orchestra are integrated into the live performance, giving folk music more diversified musical expression. In addition to original songs such as "Manjiang Red", many traditional famous songs have also been presented, such as "Mei Zhiyue" and "Bijian Flowing Spring"; There is also "Apricot Blossom Sky Shadow" by Jiang Kui, a famous lyricist and musician of the Song Dynasty, with the nostalgic dream of the literati. The choreography of the concert gives the "national style" music a more fashionable look, such as "Drunken Fishing, Singing Late", which shows the vividness and fireworks of market life, and "Manjiang Red", which plays the magnificent and exciting reconquest of rivers and mountains by the sonata soldiers.
"An audience who likes the piano club will recommend the piano club to many people around him, so we must do every link well. After each performance, we are very happy to see everyone share stills in Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and WeChat moments, and also put forward very pertinent opinions and suggestions in the online questionnaire to help the iteration of the concert of the piano club. Tang Bin said.
Wen Wei Po