The unique landscape and personality of the 36-island Matsu archipelago will be transformed into beautiful melodies and featured in two concerts to be held in Taipei and Matsu next month, the Council for Cultural Affairs announced yesterday.
Titled “The Sound of Matsu,” the two concerts, to be staged at the National Concert Hall in Taipei on Aug. 6 and at Nangan Stadium on Matsu on Aug. 25, are part of celebrations for the Republic of China’s centennial.
The council and Lienchiang County Government have invited composers and songwriters to write new pieces for the concerts, which will include seven songs, including three world premieres.
Lee Che-yi (李哲藝), a composer who has written a piano concerto for the concert, said it is difficult to convey the past 100 years of Matsu in a 20-minute concerto, but promised to try and bring the audiences and Matsu closer together. Matsu is a place where beauty goes far deeper than one can see, he said.
“Matsu is known to be a former battlefield, yet the distinctive atmosphere and emotions of the islands and the people are what make it so appealing,” he said.
Lee will introduce Matsu’s special bangu, a brigade of traditional Chinese percussion instruments during the two concerts.
Huang Ying (黃瑩), a songwriter in his 70s, will contribute three songs, including one brand new composition that he said would portray the striking scenery and people living on the islands.
“Matsu’s people are less obsessed with material goods compared with people who live on Taiwan proper. They live peacefully with the environment and they know how to enjoy life,” he said.
The Taipei Philharmonic Chorus, the Taipei Philharmonic Children’s Choir and National Chinese Orchestra Taiwan, pianist Liao Pei-chun (廖培鈞), bassoonist Chang Lung-yun (張龍雲), soprano Lin Chi-yin (林姿吟) and baritone Lin Cheng-hsun (林政勳) are scheduled to perform at the two concerts.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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