By Nancy Plum
Combining instruments audiences do not normally hear together enables a whole new level of creativity and sound. The duo ArcoStrum, founded by violinist Strauss Shi and guitarist TY Zhang, has been exploring new colors in performing throughout its young and notable history. Drawing their name from “arco,” meaning bowed, and “strum,” reflecting the guitar, the musicians are much more than these two techniques. Shi was raised in a family of Chinese instrumentalists, and supplements his virtuoso violin playing with the two-stringed erhu and bamboo dizi flute. Zhang was trained in both classical and electric guitar, with equal expertise on both. ArcoStrum brought its distinctive artistry to Richardson Auditorium last Thursday night as part of Princeton University Summer Chamber Concerts, presenting music ranging from Vivaldi to Michael Jackson.
Initially connecting as fellow students and roommates at Juilliard, Shi and Zhang have created a performance experience showing dazzling technique, innovative programming and an onstage chemistry stemming from years of collaboration. They began Thursday night with an introduction to the instruments they would be playing, with teasing banter reminiscent of the Smothers Brothers (one almost expected to hear “our professors always liked you best …”). Shi and Zhang took the audience through a journey of their partnership, as well as the elements of the erhu, a two-stringed fiddle with roots in the Tang dynasty; and the flute and piccolo dizi, transverse bamboo instruments used throughout Chinese music history.
The two soloists played the more conventional selections on the program, including from larger works of Astor Piazzolla and Antonio Vivaldi, mostly with classical guitar and violin. Shi and Zhang played two movements of Vivaldi’s suite The Four Seasons with the contrapuntal lines gelling effectively and the dry heat of “Summer” well depicted. Both guitar and violin were electronically enhanced, and it was easy to hear Shi’s dexterity in quiet sections of the music. Almost all the pieces on the program were arranged by ArcoStrum, and the Vivaldi movements well retained the original Baroque flavor with a contemporary twist.
In contrast to Vivaldi’s interpretation of seasonal progressions and climate, 20th-century Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla’s Buenos Aires Spring portrayed people in the community. Playful and dancelike, Buenos Aires Spring was lyrical, with Shi providing an especially rich upper register violin line tempered with a bit of starkness, as if winter were not quite over yet. Through his compositions, Piazzolla moved the Argentine tango to the world stage. With violin and classical guitar, Shi and Zhang brought a movement from the composer’s History of Tango to life, especially with Zhang’s quick playing in the third dance of the set.
Contemporary composer Zhihui Li’s Ink Orchid Pavilion was inspired by a well-known Chinese ink painting, and Shi incorporated the erhu and flute dizi into ArcoStrum’s presentation of this work. Shi’s haunting erhu and dizi lines were heavily ornamented, with Zhang complementing the sound with vibrato on the electric guitar.
ArcoStrum concerts always include music crossing genres, and more recently, the duo has been exploring jazz. Their arrangement of the 1937 tune Minor Swing featured klezmer-like playing from the violin with a rhythmically-driven melody from Zhang’s classical guitar. Slow jazz with a bit of snap to the lines marked the duo’s arrangement of the standard Autumn Leaves. Shi and Zhang switched melodic parts during the number, with Shi providing a violin obbligato against Zhang’s percussive electric guitar, well capturing the nostalgia of the times.
ArcoStrum closed their uniquely entertaining evening with a “mash-up” of artists separated by centuries and styles. Michael Jackson Meets Scarlatti, an arrangement originally conceived by the guitar duo Katona Twins, envisioned a world in which pop icon Jackson and 18th-century Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti lived at the same time and wrote a piece together. In ArcoStrum’s version, the music moved seamlessly from quick Baroque counterpoint to some of Jackson’s most recognizable tunes, well illustrating the imaginations of Shi and Zhang and their commitment to performance traversing boundaries, cultures, and eras.
Princeton University Summer Chamber Concerts will conclude the 2026 season on Sunday, July 19 at 4 p.m. at Richardson Auditorium with a performance by the Katarina String Quartet. This concert will feature music by Schubert, Webern, Gourzi, and Schumann. Tickets are free to the public and available one week before at tickets.princeton.edu.