When it comes to Chinese Western musical fusions, Vancouver is the undisputed leader.  Artists from these parts have at varying times merged Chinese folk and classical music with Celtic, Brazilian, Spanish and Aboriginal music to name a few, not to mention North American folk, jazz, blues and classical sounds.

Now Vancouver’s Orchid Ensemble, already one of the pioneering acts of the cross-cultural fusion scene, is preparing a concert that will showcase its members’ most personal repertoire yet: a concert that pays tribute to the centuries-old links between Chinese and Jewish culture.  It’s called Ten Thousand Miles to Kai-Feng.

The project began about 11 years ago as a labour of love for the ensemble’s founders, the husband and wife duo of Lan Tung and Jonathan Bernard.  Tung was an award-winning erhu player in Taiwan before settling in Canada with her family at age 20.  Bernard is a Canadian best online casino in australia percussionist of Jewish ancestry who is a regular with the Vancouver Symphony.

What they discovered together is fascinating: tangible evidence of a Jewish presence in China can be dated to the seventh century when Sephardic Jews arrived from Persia along the several Silk Roads, settling in China’s capital city, Xi'an. By the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1127 CE), a thriving Jewish community had been established in the new capital Kaifeng, and it remained active for the next 1200 years. More recently Russian Jews settled in Harbin and Ashkenazi Jewish refugees settled in Shanghai.  There is also a long-ago-established Jewish community in Hong Kong.

What has not survived, however, is any sense of what the music made by the Jewish settlers and their Chinese neighbours might have sounded like, or to what extent their respective musical traditions were merged.  Thus, Tung and Bernard used their imaginations to create the music that might have been – compositions that find common ground between Jewish and Chinese styles.  They also turned to Moshe Denberg, the composer behind B.C.’s well-known Jewish music ensemble, Tzimmes.

The resulting concert promises a fascinating array of work.  Among the pieces to be performed is a Denberg composition called “El Ginat Egoz,” which will feature the VCC Madrigal Singers, and a unique arrangement of a traditional Chinese piece called “Hundred Birds Honouring the Pheonix,” which has been transformed for soprano sax by Mike Braverman, the lightening-fast reed player behind Olam. The show will also mark the world premier of “El Adon,” a Denberg composition based on a sacred Jewish melody, and “Ba Ban Variations,” a new composition by Tung. In addition, there will be some Jewish-influenced pieces from the group’s 2005 Juno-nominated CD The Road to Kashgar, which explored Chinese interaction with cultures all along the Silk Road.