Chinese Guzheng player Bei Bei and London-based producer extraordinaire Shawn Lee create a unique sound that blends ancient tradition, studio trickery combined with spiritual jazz. Their uplifting, genre-bending music recalls the afrocentric harping of Dorothy Ashby, the hypnotic style of Alice Coltrane, and the organic electronics of Fourtet and Quantic.

The Guzheng is over 2000 years old and belongs to the Asian long zither family, it was used in both folk and court music in ancient China. Bei Bei began playing at the age of seven and roots her art in classical music while expanding into other styles, combining new with old into creative new expressions, especially in her collaborations with musicians from different genres such as funk, jazz, alternative, electronica, hip-hop, and dance.

Bei Bei is a multi-award winner of many national and international awards. In 2011, she and her music were included in the American college textbook “World Music” by Michael Bakan. In 2015, she was featured as one of The Most Fascinating People of Los Angeles by LA Weekly Magazine. As a studio musician, she recorded for Sci-fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica” and award-winning video game original score “Revelation” (天谕). As a composer, she composed music and performed for the China Central TV documentary series “Dun Huang”, Chinese movie “Copycat”, and for Canon web promo video “Tiger’s Heart” . She released her debut album “Quiet Your Mind And Listen” in 2006 and her collaborative album “Heart of China” (Universal Music), with Richard Horowtiz, in 2008. Her first collaborative album with Shawn Lee was called “Into The Wind” and released through Ubiquity Records in 2010.

Shawn Lee is one of the most prolific musicians of his generation. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer songwriter, composer and Radio DJ who has released 35 albums as an artist to date. He has played, produced and written on hundreds of records. He has worked with a diverse range of artists including Jeff Buckley, Kelis, Saint Etienne, Money Mark, Amy Winehouse, Jonathan Jeremiah, Darondo, Adrian Younge, Tony Joe White, Robbie Williams, Incognito and Princess Superstar to name just a few. Lee‘s music has been used extensively in both film & TV – “Monuments Men”, “20 feet from stardom”, “House of cards”, “Orange is the new black”, “Blacklist”, “Vice Principals”, “Oceans 13”, “Eastbound & Down”, “Ugly Betty”, “Nip Tuck”, “CSI”, “Confessions of a shopaholic”, Cinemaxx, Jaguar, BMW, Barclays, Clarks shoes, Head & Shoulders and many many more. He has also created bespoke music for Hermann Miller, Ace Hotels and Wallpaper magazine. As a composer, he has scored two documentary films “Elevate” and “Under the sun”. Lee also created the original soundtrack for the feature films “Save Angel Hope”, “Live Evil”, “12 Dare’s” and composed the original scores for video games “Zombie Playground” and “Rockstar’s Bully” which was nominated for best score twice – winning once.

 

For more:
Bei Bei’s website
Bei Bei on facebook