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A man true to his musical calling arrives

By Ho Yi
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Dec 09, 2005, Page 13

Hsu Po-yun accepts the plaudits. PHOTO COURTESY OF JIN CHENG-CAI

Aailed as a pioneering promoter of the performing arts and music, 61-year-old Hsu Po-yun (許博允) has left an enduring mark on both the local and international art scenes with his New Aspect Cultural and Educational Foundation (新象文教基金會). The gray-haired gentleman has devoted 25 years of his life to putting Taiwan on the world's cultural map and introducing international artists and performers to local audiences.

Few people know that Hsu is also an accomplished composer who has over 20 compositions to his name. Heart surgery earlier this year served as a wake-up call for Hsu, who decided to stop his management work and to pursue once again his life-long love affair with modern music.

The first step in his comeback is to hold a concert by several acclaimed musicians and conductors, who will present six of his modern compositions in one performance at the National Concert Hall (國家音樂廳) tonight.

Hsu's artistic career spans over 40 years, since he composed his first piece in the 1960s. Having dabbled with a formal classical training, Hsu taught himself and roams freely across the boundaries of traditional Chinese music and classical Western genres.

His highly conceptual approach to modern music has facilitated a long-term collaboration with Lin Hwai-min (林懷民).

His best-known piece The Pipa (琵琶隨筆), is an experiment using a traditional instrument's unique characteristics in a meticulously calculated structure based on the density of each string and musical note.

The Music of Hsu Po-yun (許博允之樂) will cover six major works, representing Hsu's artistic evolution from the 1960s to this year. Most of the compositions are the results of creative processes that lasted more than a decade. Violinist Huang Wei-ming (黃維明) from the Asia Pacific String Quartet (亞太弦樂四重奏) believes the unique charm of Hsu's music lies in its open structure.

"We have played [Hsu's] music for more than 10 years now, but the nuanced differences in tunes and velocity can lead to a different sphere of imagination and sensitivity each time we perform."

The quartet will present Hsu's A Meditation on Chinese Theater (中國戲曲冥想, 1973) and Submerge (潛, 1997) tonight.

Tian Yuan can be seen as a musical expression of the artist's cosmological view. Starting from silence, the music slowly extends to pervade the whole space of the performance venue with seemingly infinite variations. Chen said that the complexity of the composition poses various technical difficulties and tests the skills and expertise of each performer.

The highlight of the concert is the last piece Mood, Field, Mind, Environment (境). Completed in 1977, it exemplifies Hsu's belief in the openness and all-embracing quality inherent in music.

"It's a living composition. It varies and transforms each time a different artist from different cultural backgrounds infuses new life into the music," Hsu said.

Tonight, the piece will be performed by Ju Tzong-ching (朱宗慶), his Ju Percussion Group (朱宗慶打擊樂團) and two award-winning Mongolian vocalists Bao Yin Chao Ke Tu and Ao Deng Gerile from the Inner Mongolia Folk Arts Troupe (內蒙古民族曲藝團).

Asked why he chose khoomei music this time, Hsu talked about his passion for world music.

"I've been studying hundreds of kinds of world music, from Mongolia, Xinjiang and the Middle Asian regions for the past decade or so. The concert serves as the perfect chance to present the valuable cultural heritage cultivated over a period of thousands of years through modern music," he said.

To Hsu, the creation process doesn't stop at the completion of each piece.

"Unlike visual art, music can be recreated and transformed on multiple levels. First you, the composer, creates a piece, then each musician will have his or her own interpretation and approach to the music.

"The interaction between performers and the audience at concerts will lead the music to manifest itself in different ways and resonate with each participating individual's soul. Each performance of the music leaves in each participant an inner landscape that goes beyond the wildest imagination of the composer," Hsu said.

Performance notes:

What: The Music of Hsu Po-yun Where: National Concert Hall (國家音樂廳), 21-1, Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei (台北市中山南路21-1號)
When: Tonight at 7:30pm.
Tickets cost between NT$300 to NT$2,500, available through NTCH ticketing outlets nationwide, or at www.artsticket.com.tw
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