Derek Tsung-yu Wu (吳宗祐) stumbled upon a cozy little bookstore in Reykjavik while attending a literature festival there three years ago. On the ground floor he found a tiny studio crammed with mixers, old record players and musical instruments of different vintages. He later heard that Sigur Ros had practiced there.
The studio in Iceland inspired Wu, now general manager of the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra (台北愛樂管弦樂團), to open Reykjavik Lab, a basement practice and performance space that welcomes musicians playing all sorts of music.
Tomorrow and on Sunday, the lab will host the first edition of the Reykjavik Music Fest (雷克雅維克音樂節), a crossover festival with rock and classical performances.
Four ensembles including Verve Quartet (Verve弦樂四重奏) and String and Art Chamber Orchestra (絃琴藝緻室內樂團) will present classical music in chronological order from baroque to romantic to contemporary.
On the other end of the spectrum, Oli and her band will play folksy tunes including a rendition of Alanis Morissette’s Ironic, NyLas will present electro-rock sounds, and 88 Balaz (八十八顆芭樂籽) has been recruited for its high-energy punk rock.
“This is a space where the boundaries between musical communities get loosened up a bit. People with a classical background will get a chance to learn more about the rock kids, and rock bands can be inspired by, say, the music of Mozart,” Wu said. “We hope that maybe someday Taiwan’s musicians will describe their music not as Brit-pop or European electronica, but as our own music.”
The studio, which is owned by Taipei Philharmonic, has been presenting live Sunday chamber music concerts for the last couple of years before its reincarnation as Reykjavik Lab this past January. In celebration of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s 30th year as an author, a series of matinee concerts is planned for this month and next and will feature the classical music in Murakami’s novels, with artists playing works by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin.
A small cafe next to the studio serves snacks, coffee, tea and alcoholic beverages. Visitors are welcome to hang out and spend a weekend afternoon listening to music.
For aspiring musicians and rockers who are not quite ready to play at a club like The Wall (這牆), Wu and his staff are planning to hold concerts every Friday or Saturday with bands who practice at the studio at least 10 times within a period of two months. For more information, go to tspo.pixnet.net/blog.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist