China and Brazil turn musical differences into harmony

"We didn't know each other's language, but music connects us all," says Zhao Yunmeng, a bamboo flute player with the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, recalling a performance of Tico-Tico with Brazilian musicians during the ensemble's debut in Rio de Janeiro last month.

As the flagship project of the 2026 China-Brazil Culture Year, the orchestra toured Brazil from July 29 to Aug 14, performing for nearly 6,000 people across six cities: Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, and Porto Alegre.

"We prepared Tico-Tico for the tour because it is a Brazilian song that everyone knows," Zhao told China Daily after returning home to Shanghai.

The orchestra invited musicians from a local ensemble to join onstage. "When the music started, our instruments naturally came together and became one. It was a magical experience," she says.

Tico-Tico was performed as an encore after Digital Splendor, a nine-movement concert that takes traditional Chinese colors as its narrative thread.

Jointly produced by the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra and TME Lyra Lab under Tencent Music, the concert is the first AI-co-created Chinese orchestral concert in China.

An AI composition system generated the emotional arc of the nine movements, blending Chinese plucked-string instruments, including guqin and pipa, bamboo flute, and other instruments with classical poetry and visual art. But the musicians did not simply reproduce what AI produced.

"We tried playing it as soon as we received the AI-generated sheet music," Zhao says. "You can feel that the overall melody is really nice, and the basic structure is very solid, but the performance sounds somewhat stiff and lacks emotional expression."

The performers then reshaped the work, making adjustments to playing techniques, breath control and dynamics, while fine-tuning the interplay and responses between the instruments.

"It was important for us to bring the music to life," Zhao says.

Since its founding in 1952, the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra has sought to bring together folk traditions, contemporary sensibilities and international expression, according to Zhu Jianxin, deputy director of the orchestra, who led a 29-member ensemble on the Brazil tour. This concert is an experiment in blending traditional folk music with modern aesthetics, he says.

The approach resonated strongly with Brazilian audiences.

Painter Hileia Pedersen says the music awakened all her senses: "I saw birds, heard the wind, smelled flowers — the melody sparked so many creative ideas."

Aline Machado, a Brazilian student of Chinese language and culture, was equally taken by the unfamiliar sounds. "We couldn't name the instruments, but everything felt fresh — they make me want to go to China now!" she says.

American-Brazilian musician and music critic Harold Emert observes: "The concert took the audience through thousands of years of musical history with instruments that predate the great masters of Western classical music by centuries — even millennia.

"These remarkable instruments existed long before Bach, Telemann, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms — or even The Beatles. Yet they communicate the same universal emotions that music has always inspired."

Claudia Jannuzzi, chairperson of the Brazil-China Innovation Economics Research Institute, notes that "the combination of traditional music, Chinese colors, ancient instruments, Eastern aesthetics and modern technology was a completely different artistic experience".

The collaboration also inspired the Brazilian musicians who joined the Chinese ensemble.

Cellist Bryan Victor describes the experience as "explosive with new ideas", while violinist Maria Cecilia says the differences between the musicians ultimately brought them closer.

"Even though we have different cultures, languages and play different instruments, we share the same language of music," she says.

Zhu Qingqiao, Chinese ambassador to Brazil, says the exchange reflects the deep civilizational ties between the two countries. "China and Brazil are both nations of profound and diverse civilizations. Cultural exchange resonates across mountains and time, building the popular foundation for a China-Brazil community with a shared future."

Among those in the audience were members of Brazil's Chinese community, including one Chinese-Brazilian who has lived in the country for more than 30 years and flew to Rio especially for the concert.

He brought with him a broken sheng, a mouth-blown free-reed instrument made up of multiple bamboo pipes. No local craftsman had been able to repair it.

Wang Yang, a member of the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, spent 10 painstaking hours repairing and retuning the instrument.

In doing so, they restored not only the sheng, but also, for its owner, the sound of home.