A new program at the National Concert Hall will illuminate a lesser-known side of four-time Grammy Award-winner Lalo Schifrin.
In his twenties, Schifrin left his native Buenos Aires to play piano for Dizzy Gillespie in New York. He went on to flourish in Hollywood, churning out jazzy scores for over 100 movie and television shows like Mannix — a detective series from the 1960s — Cool Hand Luke, Mission: Impossible and the Rush Hour comedies.
Letters from Argentina is a departure from Schifrin’s big-screen soundtracks, said Shih Shun-hsin (施舜馨) of the Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center (中正文化中心), which programmed a performance of the suite for chamber orchestra.
Photo courtesy of NTCH
Uncharacteristically for the composer, Schifrin’s Letters is a personal work based on memories of childhood.
“These are Schifrin’s own memories,” Shih said. “At this point they are distant, so the aural scenes are idealized.”
“Tango del Atardecer,” the first of eight movements, is a picture of a perfect Argentine sunset. Like the others, this movement works happily with a classical compositional grid but folds in idioms of Argentine dance, such as a tango rhythm and the accordion-like bandoneon (performed by Hector del Curto).
“La Calle y la Luna” reenacts a moonlit night, while “Pampas” evokes horsemen making their way across a vast plain, contrasting a rugged piano (Octavio Brunett) with a youthful and athletic cello part by Felix Fan (范雅志).
Other instrumentalists are clarinetist David Shifrin, Lin Cho-liang (林昭亮) on violin, Pablo Aslan on double bass and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi — members of the Lincoln Center chamber group that performed Letters at its world premiere in 2005.
Also during next week’s program, the ensemble will perform selections from the late Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla.
Adios Nonino, Piazzolla’s best-known piece, was written shortly after his father’s death. It soared to an unlikely popularity when chosen as part of the entertainment at a royal wedding in Holland, Shih said. The composition opens with frantic lines from the bandoneon, expands into a lush melody on strings, and then brings back the bandoneon.
Piazzolla has been credited with introducing jazz counterpoint to native tango, Shih said.
In La Muerte del Angel, one of his five compositions inspired by angels, he adopted a subtle jazz swing and a baroque ostinato, the device of a repeated theme.
Michelangelo ‘70 also uses the ostinato. In the piece, the bandoneon, violin, electric guitar, piano and double bass take turns carrying a raucous three-note theme, building up to a breaking point. Michelangelo ‘70 was his tribute to a Buenos Aires tango club dated for the year that he left Argentina, Shih said.
For many people, Bilingual Nation 2030 begins and ends in the classroom. Since the policy was launched in 2018, the debate has centered on students, teachers and the pressure placed on schools. Yet the policy was never solely about English education. The government’s official plan also calls for bilingualization in Taiwan’s government services, laws and regulations, and living environment. The goal is to make Taiwan more inclusive and accessible to international enterprises and talent and better prepared for global economic and trade conditions. After eight years, that grand vision is due for a pulse check. RULES THAT CAN BE READ For Harper Chen (陳虹宇), an adviser
The breakwater stretches out to sea from the sprawling Kaohsiung port in southern Taiwan. Normally, it’s crowded with massive tankers ferrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar to be stored in the bulbous white tanks that dot the shoreline. These are not normal times, though, and not a single shipment from Qatar has docked at the Yongan terminal since early March after the Strait of Hormuz was shuttered. The suspension has provided a realistic preview of a potential Chinese blockade, a move that would throttle an economy anchored by the world’s most advanced and power-hungry semiconductor industry. It is a stark reminder of
The last couple of weeks spectators in Taiwan and abroad have been treated to a remarkable display of infighting in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the supplementary defense budget. The party has split into two camps, one supporting an NT$800 billion special defense budget and one supporting an NT$380 billion budget with additional funding contingent on receiving letters of acceptance (LOA) from the US. Recent media reports have said that the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) is leaning toward the latter position. President William Lai (賴清德) has proposed NT$1.25 trillion for purchases of US arms and for development of domestic weapons
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
RSS