Beijing · Gastronomy
By day, light glides over curves washed in a white that feels almost unreal.
At night, Blackswan reveals another identity. Vianney Massot describes it as a living place, changing character as the hours pass.The music had to follow that transformation, hold on to the light and reveal new depths as day gave way to night.
The brand
Blackswan Beijing
In Beijing, you enter Vianney Massot’s world through a museum. Blackswan now holds two Michelin stars.
Blackswan occupies the first floor of the Luo Hong Art Museum. Beyond the windows, the eye is drawn into the garden: water, trees, koi and swans gliding past the dining room. Inside, Chris Shao translated the swan into movement, letting its curves shape the interior.
The project began with Swans, a work by Gary Hume. Continuous lines cross, brush past one another and intertwine until the birds emerge. The idea of a form transformed by light runs through Blackswan.
In Chinese culture, the white swan carries associations of purity, nobility and fidelity; the black swan, far rarer, suggests the exceptional. By day, light fills the volumes until the white feels almost unreal. By night, the same lines deepen, the materials darken and black takes on a new presence. The restaurant keeps its form and changes its state.
These images brought Kubrick to mind: 2001: A Space Odyssey. The connection is entirely our own; it records our first response to the place: immaculate whiteness, sweeping curves, a sense of space suspended somewhere between architecture and silence.
Light gives music its first movement.
© The Black Swan, Chris Shao Studio
The project
So far, so close
Blackswan came to us through a name we already knew: Joël Robuchon. Vianney Massot had been sous-chef at La Grande Maison in Bordeaux. Music Eye View had worked with La Grande Maison, as well as several other Robuchon houses. Long before Blackswan, our paths had already crossed the same ground.
The music for Blackswan began with an act of absolute trust. His cuisine carries his signature; he trusted us to find a musical signature for the place. We were given complete freedom, and with it a demanding brief: to bring music into Blackswan with such precision that it felt as though it had always belonged there.
The rest took shape at a distance. Voices, images and words were enough to close the distance. Vianney let us follow that interpretation all the way through, leaving the direction entirely in our hands. Within that trust, the sound identity found its final form.
A few days before the grand opening, during rehearsals, the music finally met Blackswan. For the first time, what had been imagined from afar entered the volumes, the light and the rhythm of service. Vianney embraced it in full, without a single change. What we had imagined took on physical form around him.
At that moment, music entered the very fabric of Blackswan: mingling with light, gestures, flavours and silences until it became one of the presences that shape the place.
Trust takes shape.
© The Black Swan, Chris Shao Studio
Sound identity
White swan, black swan
Chris Shao threads the presence of the swan through Blackswan. It appears in the curves, the sculpted ceilings, the continuity of the lines and the way each material catches the light. Stone, plaster, velvet and metal create an interior landscape, precise yet constantly shifting.
Beyond the windows, the garden carries the same language into the living world. Water, trees, koi and the swans themselves extend the architecture beyond the glass. The eye moves from material to reflection, from curve to living presence.
As the hours pass, the place shifts again. Daylight stretches the volumes, softens the surfaces and makes the white feel almost unreal. Evening settles into the same lines; the materials darken, shadows gather depth, and Blackswan changes register without losing its thread.
Vianney Massot’s cooking follows the same line. Precision, balance and attention to what is almost imperceptible run through it too. The chef’s gestures, Chris Shao’s materials and the changing light all speak the same language.
The music needed to find its place within that rhythm: to preserve the sense of lightness without letting it dissolve, to deepen with the room without weighing it down, to leave room for silence, then to follow Blackswan as it moves from white into black.
Shape becomes movement.
© The Black Swan, Chris Shao Studio
Programming
Weightless
Blackswan’s music takes three forms. The restaurant takes its cue from the white swan. The bar belongs to evening, when the black swan emerges with the fading light. The Library, the Chef’s Table, draws everything closer: a handful of guests, Vianney nearby, a more intimate conversation with the place.
Restaurant
At the restaurant, Air, Cascadeur and Tao give electronica an almost weightless quality. Textures breathe, voices seem to lose their weight, and the pulse stays supple, leaving space around it. The music carries forward the sense of suspension we felt in the very first images of Blackswan.
Library
In the Library, Goldmund, Philip Glass and Víkingur Ólafsson shift that sense of suspension towards piano, repetition and the space between notes. With only a handful of guests and Vianney close by, listening becomes more intimate; every motif feels nearer, every silence more present. The music becomes sparer, almost tactile.
Bar
At the bar, Freedom Fry, Napkey and Weekend Affair bring a more immediate energy. All three belong to a younger French electro-pop scene that often works in English, giving the evening a livelier, more direct pulse. Something of Vianney’s own culture comes through, recast in a sound that feels entirely current; the black swan gathers momentum without losing its elegance.
After the swan, the loong.
© The Black Swan, Chris Shao Studio
Governance
From Blackswan to Loong Bar
Another name began to surface in our conversations: Loong Bar Beijing. Vianney led us there.
With Loong Bar, the swan gave way to another mythology. The loong, the Chinese dragon, has carried associations of power, authority and good fortune for centuries. Historically, even the number of claws could signal rank: five were associated with the emperor and the imperial family; four appeared in noble and courtly contexts; three-clawed forms appeared in contexts further removed from the imperial sphere.
Behind a figure too easily reduced to the word “dragon” lies a whole language of signs, rank, stories and symbols.
That symbolic world became our point of entry. Blackswan had led us towards light, white and black, the passage from one state to another. Loong Bar opened onto a different world, shaped by a creature associated with sky and water, strength, power and good fortune, and by an iconography in which every detail can matter.
That was where the music had to begin.
Two projects have now grown from this relationship. Voices, images and music have crossed thousands of kilometres between Paris and Beijing.
Listening begins again elsewhere.
“To leave the guest with the deepest possible memory, in the simplest possible way.”
Vianney Massot
