East sounds West

Matteo spent six weeks last summer studying music at Sichuan University in Chengdu and finished their first EP Sichuan Project during their stay.Photos Provided to China Daily

"Living in America, our lives are surprisingly connected to China. We interact with Chinese people daily, speak and teach Chinese," says Riley, who is a classical guitarist and teacher in music education with a growing appetite for world music.

Riley's father lived in Taiwan in 1971 as a Mormon missionary. Riley went to Taiwan in 2004 and learned erhu there. At the completion of four years at the university, he and friends spent six-weeks backpacking through Southwest China into Laos. Passing through Kunming along the way, he purchased a zhongruan as a traveling instrument.

Later in the US, he hit upon a pipa, yueqin, and guzheng.

"We are not trying to 'be' Chinese. We are more trying to express what we have experienced collectively in our lives thus far, and a large part of that happens to be China," he says.

Chipman and the rest of the band spent six weeks last summer studying music at Sichuan University in Chengdu, where they polished their instrument playing skills and finished their first EP, Sichuan Project during their stay there - Western songs interpreted on Chinese instruments.

About 90 percent of the album was written and recorded in the international student dormitory over a three-week period. Back in Utah, after the trip, they wrote the remaining lyrics, sang a few vocal parts, and recorded a bit more erhu.

One of the songs, Mountain Pass, is largely about their weeklong road trip in a 14-passenger van into western Sichuan province. Breakfast is the one instrumental track on the album representing the city of Chengdu in the morning.

The band says American music has many different genres, many of which have become popular worldwide. It is music that they are familiar with. But sometimes they hear too much of the same genre of music in the same venues as background or hear too many advertisements using music to sell a product.