“From film I’ve learned new things about acting and from TV music variety shows I’ve been exposed to styles that were new to me,” Ayanga tells Apple Music. A veteran of musical theatre and a graduate of the Beijing Dance Academy, this actor/singer hailing from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia has made it his goal to promote the art on stage and on screen. He has carried out this mission with star turns in Nasirdin Afandi and the touring musical On The Road (to which he contributed songs), as well as hit TV competitions like The City of Musicals and Masked Dancing King. He finds his bifurcated roles as celebrity and musician a source of inspiration: “It’s not really a balancing act—it’s actually a process of mutual absorption.” That symbiosis is in full display on his second studio album, The Art. The tracks of this concept album correspond to works of literature, telling miniature sonic stories in a groundbreaking exploration of the synthesis of the written word and pop music—“Love Island”, for example draws from The Count of Monte Christo and “Under the Cherry Tree” is inspired by Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Drawing from fairy tales and sci-fi in addition to classic lit, these original songs bring a theatrical thrill to the stories they weave. For Ayanga, storytelling in song poses a problem when compared to a complete dramatic work: “They’re more condensed. That’s what makes it difficult sometimes—you have to express the best part of a play in a single song.” But it ultimately comes down to the emotional content: “Why are these emotions and emotions reflected in this song? That’s the kind of energy that can draw people into a novel or a work of literature,” he says. A new edition of The Art created especially for Spatial Audio impressed Ayanga with the listening experience and the new dimensions the technology brings to the music. “I’ve never been in a surround sound, professional Spatial Audio environment like that before,” he says. “The experience in the headphones is quite impressive. It’s like being in a cinema, where you can hear the sounds from different angles and positions, and especially that some of them sound very close to you and some sound very far away.”