关山月
Guān Shān Yuè
Moon over the Mountain Pass
A landscape of moonlight, distance and longing. The music holds stillness and separation within the same spacious image, allowing each sounded note to remain present through its fading resonance.
Guqin · Performance · Culture
Yvonne YAN
Guqin Cultural Artist · UK
An art of attentive listening.
The Guqin is not only heard.It is read through gesture,felt through touch andentered through attention.
Yvonne Yan is a UK-based Guqin cultural artist whose practice brings together performance, cultural interpretation and contemplative listening. She began studying piano at three and the Guqin at thirteen, developing a musical perspective shaped by both Western classical training and Chinese literati tradition. Through intimate performances, storytelling and introductions to Jianzipu notation, she invites audiences to experience the Guqin not only as an ancient seven-string instrument, but as a living practice of sound, gesture, imagination and attention. Her work also explores how Guqin practice can enter contemporary conversations around mindfulness, wellbeing and inner stillness.
Performance
Selected
performances
Two short performance excerpts offer contrasting entrances into the guqin: one shaped by moonlight, distance and restraint; the other by movement, playfulness and release.
醉渔唱晚
Zuì Yú Chàng Wǎn
Evening Song of the Drunken Fisherman
An evening on the water loosens gradually into freedom and spontaneity. The work moves from repose towards gestures that feel playful, fluid and increasingly unrestrained.
Culture & practice
The guqin brings sound, gesture, notation and attention into one quiet field of practice.
Between two traditions of musical thought.
Yvonne has woven the guqin into the rhythm of everyday life: a practice of listening, reflection and quiet discipline. Returning to it each day offers a way to cultivate the self, nourish inner stillness and bring greater attentiveness to how she lives.
Read the artist storyGallery