Over the coming week the Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center will be treating audiences to a series of concerts featuring a selection of some of the most ground-breaking contemporary classical music ever performed in Taiwan.
Entitled The Contemporary Music Festival, the six program series is the brain child of Ensemble Modern founder and CKS Cultural Center music adviser Karsten Witt. It is the first of its kind to be held in Asia. If successful, organizers hope to make the festival an annual event that will host some of the world's leading contemporary ensembles, orchestras and soloists.
As part of the series, The Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern will be performing a string of specially designed concerts that, according to Witt, will give Taiwan audiences maximum exposure to some of the finest examples of contemporary ensemble/chamber music.
"The program has been exclusively drawn up for Taipei audiences. We will try to open up different and previously unheard aspects of contemporary music as well as giving them [audiences] a point of reference from which to draw from," Witt said. "None of the works are experimental and all have been performed by ensembles more than 50 times worldwide."
Established in 1980, Ensemble Modern consists of 19 soloists and has built a reputation as one of the most adaptable ensembles in the world. Along with performing traditional chamber/orchestra styled contemporary and classical concerts, the group is one of the few to incorporate video, dance and theater into its lively and often off-beat performances.
"As I was given very short notice in regard the festival's starting date, I opted to invite the Ensemble Modern to showcase the event because it is an ensemble that, while specializing in contemporary music, remains hugely versatile," he said. "The material in the series demonstrates this with the group performing works from two very different ends of the musical scale, namely contemporary works and more orchestrated and chamber-like material."
The festival will see the ensemble performing well-known contemporary works by rock satirist Frank Zappa, minimalist composer Stephen Reich and musical dramatist Heiner Goebbels.
Along with the more off-beat and contemporary concerts, the ensemble will also be presenting works by more conventional composers, including Helmut Lachenmann, Anton von Webern, Edgar Varese and Olivier Messaien. Though different from the festival's more contemporary concerts, Witt believes that the inclusion of more orchestrated pieces is important for local audiences.
"Because this type of concert series is new to Taipei audiences we wanted to include some more traditional chamber music in order to give audiences a point of reference," said Witt. "While Weber and Messaien may not be seen as contemporary composers, they were still very influential. Zappa was influenced by Varese and Messaien is considered by many as one of the greatest 20th century composers."
The opening concert in the series, which takes place at the National Concert Hall on Sunday, will see the Ensemble Modern performing a selection of tunes from its latest album Modern Rock of Zappa and Ensemble Modern. Having first collaborated with Zappa in 1992 on the Yellow Shark project, the ensembles' latest tribute to the late avant garde rock 'n' roll guru features a selection of what are considered to be some of Zappa's most provocative and absurd compositions. The program will include reworkings of The Beltway Bandits, A Pig with Wings, The Dangerous Kitchen and Night School to name but a few.
On Wednesday, Jan. 7, the ensemble, under the baton of its current conductor, Frank Ollu, will be working in collaboration with vocal soloists, Linda Hirst and Omar Ebrahim for a performance of Benjamin Mason's Chaplin Operas.
Entitled Silent Films of Charlie Chaplin and the Ensemble Modern, a huge movie screen will be erected in the National Theater and the ensemble, -- along with the guest vocalists -- will perform Easy Street, The Immigrant and The Adventurer, three of Charlie Chaplin's most famous flicks. The result, according to Witt, is far removed from what audiences are used to seeing in Chaplin movies.
"With the use of a special projector we have been able to slow the films down. So instead of being purely comedy the concert is also quite a serious documentary about life in the US at the beginning of the century," Witt said. "It's a complex project with music and text. Though in parts it might appear random, the score has been in fact been synchronized precisely with the films."
For the final concert in the series, which takes place on Jan. 11 at the National Theater, Ensemble Modern will perform Heiner Goebbels' "musical play," Black on White. Part theater and part concert, the piece, which was written especially for the Ensemble Modern by Goebbels in 1996, sees the ensemble's members becoming characters in an extraordinarily off-beat and at times informal choreographed musical drama.
"The piece's informality makes it appear at first to be an improvisational work, but it is in fact a precise score and all the ensemble's movements and gestures are choreographed," Witt said. "It is a very personal piece that I liken to ballet, theater and a concert. It is very unique."
Along with playing their instruments while seated, walking and standing (often with their backs to the audience) and taking to turns to conduct, the piece features some pretty far-fetched and unconventional musical apparatuses. These include an amplified thunder sheet, at which the group throws tennis balls in order to create a strange musical soundscape, playing skittles with brass mutes, using the lid of a harpsichord as a checkerboard, employing a whistling kettle, as well reciting poetry by Edgar Allen Poe.
Festival Info
The Contemporary Music Festival will run from Jan. 4 though Jan. 11, with concerts taking place at the National Concert Hall (國家音樂廳), National Theater (國家戲劇院) and the Experimental Theater (實驗劇場).
Dates and locations for the concert series are as follows:
Jan 4: Modern Rock of Zappa and Ensemble Modern at the National Concert Hall.
Jan 6: Ensemble Modern Concert I, Werban: Vareses: Ligeti: Lachenmann at the National Concert Hall.
Jan 7: Silent Films of Charlie Chaplin and the Ensemble Modern at the National Theatre.
Jan 8: Ensemble Modern Concert II, Reich: Nancarrow: Goebbels: Mikashoff at the National Theatre.
Jan 9: Ensemble Modern Concert III, Lachenmann: Messiaen at the Experimental Theatre.
Jan 11: Goebbels: Black on White at the National Theatre.
All shows begin at 7:30pm.
Tickets are available direct from the CKS Cultural Center booking office and range in price from NT$300 to NT$2,500 depending on the program.
Tickets for this coming Sunday's opening concert, Modern Rock of Zappa, cost from NT$600 to NT$2,000.
For further information and a full schedule call (02) 2343 1548 or log on to the CKS Cultural Center Web site at http://ntch.edu.com.
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