Holistic approach

Music director Yu Yat-yiu hadn't heard Elaine Jin Yan-ling sing until he sat in a recording studio with the Taiwanese actress almost two years ago. Hearing her the first time, he was inspired to write three songs.

"Her voice is precious. People don't sing that way any more. She's classic and has a kind of atmosphere around her voice which is deep with emotions. It's very old school," Yu says.

Jin hadn't sung on stage since the 1970s and few people remembered she could sing, but those at Zuni Icosahedron hadn't forgotten. The avant garde theatre group invited her to star in Eighteen Springs, a production based on the Eileen Chang Ai-ling novel. Jin only realised singing was on the agenda after she had accepted. It came as a shock.

"She panicked. Of course, we comforted her and I went to our studio with her", a rare treat for Yu. "Most of the time we don't have the luxury of getting to know the singer first and to get to have a session with her to try different ranges and styles to see what fits her best."

Jin sings all 10 songs in Eighteen Springs - the three Yu wrote for her as well as seven Chinese and western oldies, which he tinkered with to fit the performance. For the Herman Hupfeld classic As Time Goes By - best known for its inclusion in Casablanca - he changed the instrumentation but tried to keep the spirit of the piece, while he changed others more drastically.

Chang's novel, a heart-wrenching tale of tragedy and ill-fated romance set in 1930s Shanghai, is a much-loved story and its popularity added to Yu's pressure to do a good job.

"The story happened almost a century ago, but the way people handle love, marriage and relationships is still the same. It's all related to families, money and social status that overwhelm the actual love, but not many people read it that way, they just read it as a romantic story," he says.