“Home Bass” by Kelly Chung Dawson in China Daily on March 3 describes the U.S.-China career of Metropolitan Opera bass Haojiang Tian and spotlights Tian’s newest cross-cultural innovation, I Sing Beijing, which selects twenty young Western opera singers for a month of training in Mandarin and Chinese opera in Beijing.
Laurie Feldman, a stage director at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, says Tian is committed to mentoring younger singers.
“He has a passion for bringing young singers along, helping them and teaching and preparing them for careers both in China and in the rest of the world. It's a very special quality he has, the quality of valuing mentoring, and valuing paying it forward. He's the foremost basso opera singer to come out of China to have an international career, and he's a big inspiration to young singers, both in the West and in Asia.”
On January 27, the China Institute honored Tian and his wife Martha Liao, founder of the Asian Performing Arts Council, for I Sing Beijing and other cultural exchanges that the couple has initiated between the U.S. and China.
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