"What is the East? What is the West? We hope to show a new interpretation in this year's music festival. The meaning of 'Music and East' is to show different boundaries in music tradition and history, and to remove artificial boundaries in music creation and performance." said Cai Jindong, dean of the US-China Music Study Institute of the Bard Conservatory of Music and artistic director of the China Contemporary Music Festival in New York.
In October this fall, the "New York China Contemporary Music Festival" hosted by the Bard Conservatory of Music and the China Central Conservatory of Music celebrates its fifth anniversary and will return to Lincoln Center on an unprecedented scale, and interpret the theme of this year's "Music and Fun Things" through three concerts.
Conductor Cai Jindong will conduct the Bad Contemporary Orchestra, the New Asia Chamber Music Association Orchestra, and the Bad Conservatory of Music Folk Orchestra, bringing three concerts: "Beijing Story", "Painted Skin" and "East Travel Music".
Among them, the excerpts of the opera " Camel Xiangzi " by Hao Weiya 's opera "Painted Skin" by 's new American version, Ye Xiaogang 's "The Second Symphony "The Great Wall" by Huang Anlun 's symphony poem "Xu Beihong's Painting Realm" by .
Music Festival poster
On October 9, "Beijing Story" will be held by Cai Jindong, the Bard Contemporary Orchestra at the Rose Theater at the Jazz Center in Lincoln Center.
concert will kick off in Av Shalomuf 's "Beijing Hutong". The Russian-born Jewish-American composer has lived in China for 30 years since 1918. "Beijing Hutong" was premiered in 1933, from the sound of temple bells in the early morning to the hawking of street vendors, from Peking Opera to the sound of funeral drums... like a scroll of symphonic sounds and pictures of old Beijing streets in the eyes of Westerners.
"Camel Xiangzi" written by Lao She will debut on the American stage in the form of an opera. Composer Guo Wenjing specially selected four movements for the music festival, using the tragedy of marriage between Xiangzi and Hu Niu as the story line to show the drama, lyricality and symphony of the opera. The male and female protagonists are played by tenor singer Li Yi and soprano singer Deng Manli.
Composer Ye Xiaogang's "The Second Symphony "The Great Wall" will also premiere in the United States. This work takes the Great Wall as the theme, and draws on folk music from ethnic groups such as Han, Hui, Manchu, Mongolian, Uyghur, as well as Shaanxi, Shanxi, Gansu, Hebei, Northeast China and other places, as well as operas such as Peking Opera, Qin Opera, Qin Opera, , Shanxi Bangzi, Hebei Bangzi and rap music materials. Young pianist Ju Xiaofu and local erhu , pipa , flute , and horse-head fiddle players in New York were invited to participate.
On October 7, "Beijing Story" will also be staged at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on the Bud College campus in New York.
Cai Jindong Photography Karl Rabe
On October 15, the "Painted Skin" will be conducted by Cai Jindong in the Bard Conservatory of Music Folk Orchestra at the Rose Theater at the Lincoln Center Jazz Center.
The indoor opera "Painted Skin" is composed by Hao Weiya, professor of Central Conservatory of Music, and is adapted from the story of the same name in Pu Songling "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio". The new version of "Painted Skin", which will be performed in the United States, was jointly produced by Bard's American-Chinese Music Research Institute and the Central Conservatory of Music. Director Hofmann uses a new concept to show the fantasy story of the human and ghost entanglement of Pu Songling to the audience with the background of contemporary American society.
All three characters in the play are played by women. Among them, Wang Sheng and his wife are played by meteorni Kristin Gornstein and fancy soprano Holly Flack respectively. The two American singers will sing the whole play in Chinese. The fox demon Gui Yan is starring Qian Yi, a famous actress in Kunqu Opera, , Kunqu Opera, . Qian Yi studied Kunqu Opera in Shanghai since he was ten years old. In 1998, he starred in the 19-hour Kunqu Opera "Peony Pavilion" at the Lincoln Center Art Festival, which caused a sensation.
On October 13, the opera "Painted Skin" will also be performed at the Hudson Opera Hall in Upstate New York.
Cai Jindong Photography Karl Rabe
On October 22, the closing concert "East Travel Music" will be conducted by Cai Jindong in the New Asia Chamber Music Association Orchestra and will be held at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center.
From composer Qi Erpin, Chinese painter Xu Beihong to Jiang Wenye and Huang Anlun, the concert will show the influence of early artists on Chinese music and art in the form of multimedia, as well as the persistent exploration and pursuit of generations of Eastern and Western artists for more than a hundred years.
The one-act chamber opera "The Fairy and the Farmer" (formerly known as "The Clam Shell") by the Russian American composer Qierpin describes a Chinese folk fairy match based on the imagination and techniques of Westerners. The whole play will be sung in French, with American soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Chinese tenor Li Yi playing the fairy and the farmer respectively.
Qierpin has a deep relationship with Shanghai. He went to Shanghai in 1934 and met the principal of National Music College, Xiao Youmei. After marrying Li Xianmin, a graduate of National Music College, in France, he has been committed to playing and promoting Chinese-style music works, becoming the best music bridge for Europeans at that time to understand Chinese music information. In 1945, Xiaoyan, who was studying in Paris for 2 weeks, entered the Paris National Grand Theater and sang Chilpin's "Clamshell" in the form of an oratorio . He became famous in one battle and was called the "Nightingale from the East". In 2019, to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Qierpin's birth, Shanghai Conservatory of Music held the "Qilpin Art Week Series".
Chinese painter Xu Beihong's exploration of integrating Western and Chinese painting has also influenced generations of Chinese artists. Composer Jiang Wen is both a disciple of Qierpin and a friend of Xu Beihong. Under the influence of the two artists, he devotes his life to the exploration of Eastern and Western art. The concert will present the third movement of the piano concerto, "Xu Beihong's Painting Impression", which was also inspired by Xu Beihong's paintings, and Xu Beihong's daughter Xu Fangfang will be the piano solo.
Composer Huang Anlun's symphony poem "Xu Beihong's Painting Concept" was commissioned by this music festival and will be on the stage.
Cai Jindong conducts the Bad Contemporary Orchestra Photography Guan Liming
New York China Contemporary Music Festival is an annual series of activities sponsored by the US-China Music Study Institute of the Bad Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music. It is committed to enhancing the public's understanding and love of Chinese contemporary music through a series of concerts and related academic activities and promoting artistic and cultural exchanges between China and the United States. Every year, the festival has an independent theme, and it is now in its fifth year.
The first music festival in 2018 "Looking back on the past and looking forward to the future: Chinese composers of the 21st century" showed the US and global premiere of 11 living Chinese composers' orchestral works by 11 living Chinese composers at concerts at the Bard Academy , Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. 8 of them were from teachers of the composing department of the Central Conservatory of Music.
In 2019, the music festival held a series of performances at Bard College, Carnegie Hall and Stanford University under the theme of "Music and Integration of China and the United States". It showed the important moment of Sino-US relations through music, and the world premiered the new symphonic orator "Iron Man Golden Nails" by the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and composer Zhou Long . On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Pacific Railway, it paid tribute to the nearly 20,000 Chinese workers who participated in the construction of the railway that year.
2020's "China and Beethoven " held an 8-day series of activities on the Internet. Through music performances, speech forums, movie screenings, etc., we celebrated the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, and also explored the development of classical music in China from multiple angles.
2021's "Voice of Asians" was held at Bard Academy and online, focusing on the works of composer Huang Ruo , and extended to invite many outstanding contemporary Asian American composers and musicians to look at more than a hundred years of Asian stories and explore the importance of Asian composers in contemporary American music and society.
