The world lost one of the great popularizers of opera Sept. 6 with the death of Luciano Pavarotti. Like the full-bodied tenor, the Klazz Brothers have marketed classical music to a broad audience.
It all started in Havana, Cuba, when a trio of classically trained musicians from Germany was in town with the Dresden Orchestra and happened upon two Cuban percussionists. After a few moment's conversation they realized they shared a curious common musical ground. That meeting spawned a blend of European classical elements mixed with swing and Latin jazz and the diversity of Cuban rhythms.
The Klass Brothers and Cuban Percussion are in town for a one-off concert tonight at the National Concert Hall, where they will team up with the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) - led by Roger Epple - to play a number of songs that fuse classical and Latin music. Featured songs include Carmen Cuban, Summertime and Mambozard.
PHOTO: COOOURTESY OF NTCH
The ensemble will then take its Cuban and classical fusion to Taichung tomorrow for a free concert at the Fulfillment Amphitheatre (圓滿戶外劇場), in Hsinwen Forest Park.
The Klazz Brothers are made up of bassist Kilian Forster, pianist Tobias Forster, and drummer Tim Hahn and Cuban Percussion comprises the talented Alexis Herrera Estevez and Elio Rodriguez Luis.
Yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as their Taipei mayoral candidate, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) put their stamp of approval on Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) as their candidate for Changhua County commissioner and former legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has begun the process to also run in Changhua, though she has not yet been formally nominated. All three news items are bizarre. The DPP has struggled with settling on a Taipei nominee. The only candidate who declared interest was Enoch Wu (吳怡農), but the party seemed determined to nominate anyone
In a sudden move last week, opposition lawmakers of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) passed a NT$780 billion special defense budget as a preemptive measure to stop either Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) or US President Donald Trump from blocking US arms sales to Taiwan at their summit in Beijing, said KMT heavyweight Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), speaking to the Taipei Foreign Correspondents Club on Wednesday night in Taipei. The 76-year-old Jaw, a political talk show host who ran as the KMT’s vice presidential candidate in 2024, says that he personally brokered the deal to resolve
What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), alongside their smaller allies the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), are often accused of acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Some go so far as to call them “traitors.” It is not hard to see why. They regularly pass legislation to stymie the normal functioning of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) administration, and they have yet to pass this year’s annual budget. They slashed key elements of the government’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion) special military budget, and in the smaller NT$780 billion package they did pass, it is riddled with provisions that