The Zen of Zheng

Gu zheng is a musical instrument, somewhat like a zither, in Chinese classical music. It is a string instrument with the strings going along its length. One plays it sitting down while the zheng is rested on two stands.

My wife has been studying the zheng with the world-famous Ms. Chang Yuan Wang. Ms. Wang is the head of the Overseas Chinese Instrumentalists' Orchestra. She has a few CDs out and played at many concert halls, including Lincoln Center just a few months ago. According to my wife, there are even people in China who hijack her good name to open music school, all without her permission.

The event at Lincoln Center was great but also took a lot of the participants' time and energy. Some people have suggested having a party some time soon to celebrate its fruition. I plan to contribute to the party by making a photomosaic poster. The poster's main image is that of Ms. Wang as shown at left with the tiles being faces and photos of the students. As my wife is an active participant, and probably the most senior student of Ms. Wang, I have quite a collection of all the performances I went with my wife. Kensington Park in Westchester, Chatham Branch of the New York Public Library, Sun Yat Sen High School, South Street Seaport, so on and so on. Unfortunately, most of the photos were made from 35mm cameras. I have to meticulously find them and scan them in.

As before, I plan to use MacOSaiX, by Frank Midgley, to make the mosaic, then print it out with Luxor Development's Poster Print. It would be nice if there's some way to add markers to the sides of the finished product, so people can tell their friends where to find their pictures once they found their own. It is a fun project. Moving photos from the shoeboxes into digital format, it's something I always want to do, even if it means only zheng-related photos, not everything.