Sizhukong (絲竹空), which fuses modern jazz and traditional Chinese music, celebrates the release of its new CD, Paper Eagle (紙鳶), tonight and tomorrow with three shows at the Red House Theater (西門紅樓).
The six-piece ensemble is led by pianist and composer Peng Yu-wen (彭郁雯), one of the founding members of Metamorphosis, a pioneering group known for recasting Taiwanese folk songs in modern jazz styles, including Latin jazz, be-bop and post-bop.
Many of Peng’s compositions with Sizhukong have Latin-based jazz rhythms, but the voices are distinctively Chinese, thanks to instruments such as the liuqin (柳琴), a four-stringed lute, and dizi (笛子), a kind of Chinese flute.
Paper Eagle, the group’s second album, also brings in African sounds thanks to guest musician Mogauwane Mahloelo of South Africa. He plays mbira (thumb piano) and djembe, a hand drum, on the song Marketplace (市集) and also adds percussion and vocals to the group’s rendition of a traditional Hakka mountain song.
The album features several compositions from the band’s international members. Belgian bassist Martijn Vanbuel co-wrote several tracks with Taiwanese jazz musicians, including Deer Harbor, a song about the town of Lugang (鹿港), an historical trading port and point of entry for Chinese settlers.
Sizhukong’s band lineup for this weekend’s shows includes prominent musicians from Taiwan’s jazz and Chinese music scenes: Toshi Fujii (藤井俊充) on drums and percussion, Huang Chih-ping (黃治評) on dizi and dongxiao (洞簫, bamboo flute), Alex Wu (吳政君) on erhu (二胡) and percussion, Chen Chih-ling (陳芷翎) on liuqin and zhongruan (中阮) and Martijn Vanbuel on bass.
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade
RSS