The prince comes back

Photos: CFP and courtesy of the event organizers

Born in 1967, Taiwanese singer Jeff Chang has been known as the "prince of love songs" among Chinese-speaking music lovers for more than two decades. Recently, his appearance on the TV program I'm a Singer has stoked nostalgia among his fans, who are all too often moved to tears by his heartfelt lyrics and enchanted singing.

This Sunday, Chang will join a Shanghai audience for a concert of his world tour Love. Light Year that started in 2014. It's his 10th concert tour since his debut in 1989.

According to the event organizer, the set list will include a good selection of Chang's classics, including not only "Love Is Only One Word," "Belief" and "Love Like a Tide," which confess unmasked, zealous love, but also "From Beginning to Now" and "Please Come Back," his lamentations on failed relationships.

In the past 27 years, Chang's golden era in Taiwan was in the 1990s and gradually he switched his focus to the Chinese mainland. Meanwhile, "the prince of love songs" has been pushing boundaries in other musical styles.

Since 2006, when he started to independently make music, he has tried a variety of genres, from ethnic Chinese music to hip-hop and rock as well.

This Shanghai concert will serve as a precious chance for music lovers to go through Chang's music career, which is also a significant part of Chinese-language music history over the past three decades.

Date: Sunday, 7:30 pm

Venue: Hongkou Football Stadium

虹口足球场

Address: 444 Dongjiangwan Road

东江湾路444号

Tickets: 380 yuan ($58.66) to 1,880 yuan

Call 6540-0009 for details

Experimental music theater for Georges Méliès

Chinese musician Xu Fengxia, Swiss musician Simon Berz and Willem Schulz from Germany will present an experimental music theater that's dedicated to famous French filmmaker Georges Méliès.

In this 1-hour show, the three musicians will integrate physical performance into music instrument playing to conduct a dialogue with three of Méliès' short films, The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon, A Trip to the Moon and The Kingdom of the Fairies.

The show can be seen as a combination of live concert and theater, as audiences will not only hear instrumental performances of sanxian (an ancient Chinese three-stringed instrument), guzheng (an ancient Chinese zither) and cello and drums, but also be submerged in a theatrical atmosphere created by the three musicians through their dialogues and body movements.

Xu, the first Chinese musician to win Germany's top jazz award Essen Jazzpott in 2009, plays sanxian and guzheng and contributes vocals in the show.

Berz is a composer, jazz drummer and sound artist, and has been touring around Europe, America and Asia with different projects.

One of his latest projects is to make music for German sci-fi film Metropolis' screenings in China and Switzerland.

Schulz is a cello composer and an avant-garde art organizer, whose interest is in both modern music and world music.

He has been an active figure in German art scene with programs such as Listen in Osnabrück last year, which collaborated with 41 music groups and hundreds of solo musicians and multiple theater troupes and educational institutes.

Date: April 22, 7:30 pm

Venue: Power Station of Art

上海当代艺术博物馆

Address: 200 Huayuangang Road

花园港路200号

Tickets: 80 yuan for presale and 100 yuan at the door

Book tickets at gewara.com/drama/292630100

The Godfather Live concert

The 1972 film The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is cemented in its place as one of the greatest films in the 20th century. Besides its intriguing plot and impressive characters, the film's music is also very remarkable.

Coppola invited Italian composer Nino Rota to create the score, which reinforces an Italian feel in the film that revolves around a dysfunctional Italian-American family.

On April 23, a symphony group of more than 80 musicians will present a live concert of the soundtrack, which will be played together with a screening of the complete film.

The film, which will be shown in HD, serves as a rare opportunity for a domestic audience, as the film has scarcely been screened in cinemas here.

The Godfather Live is produced by Cineconcerts, a producer of live music shows incorporating visual media, and has been traveling to meet audiences around the world in the past years. Often concerts collaborate with local symphonies in different cities it goes to.

Rota's original score was released in 1972 on vinyl by Paramount Records and later in CD and other digital formats by other labels.

Allmusic.com credited the album five out of five stars, while the American Film Institute ranked it to No.5 in a list of greatest film scores.

Cineconcerts' creative head, Justin Freer, who is also an award-winning composer and conductor, rebuilt the score from materials he found in the Paramount music archives and created The Godfather Live.

"There is little film music as instantly recognizable as Nino Rota's opening music played on trumpet, and only a handful of films as masterfully made as The Godfather. The marriage of these two masterpieces on stage live will be something to remember," Freer writes in the official website of The Godfather Live.

Date: April 23, 6:30 pm

Venue: Shanghai Grand Stage

上海大舞台

Address: 1111 Caoxi Road North

漕溪北路1111号

Tickets: 180 yuan to 880 yuan

Call 6439-9700 for details