Award-winning composer-pianist Sherry Shieh (謝世嫻) is a huge film buff. Chatting over tea near Taipei 101, the Taiwanese musician says that one of her favorite movies is The Exorcist.
Unlike other horror movies, where eerie music is used to foreshadow a scary scene, The Exorcist has “no music in the scariest parts, so your imagination goes wild,” she says.
From creating ambience to expressing emotions, music is an integral yet often overlooked aspect of film. For Shieh, a musical score can distinguish a good movie from a truly memorable one.
Photo courtesy of Godfrey Zwygart
Shieh, who composes music for film, will discuss the importance of film music and provide a live demonstration tomorrow at 5:30pm at the historic and picturesque Yang San-lang Art Museum (楊三郎美術館) in New Taipei City.
Music from four films will make up the Shieh’s program: The Pianist, Legend of 1900, The Best Offer and La Vie En Rose.
Shieh says she chose these films to show her own musical range. In The Pianist, there are only three scenes throughout the film that contain music. By contrast, the musical scores for Legend of 1900 and The Best Offer, both of which are written by Ennio Morricone, consist of a single song, recycled for most scenes.
ITALIAN BEGINNINGS
Trained as a concert pianist since age five, Shieh was set on a PhD track in musical arts at Boston University when she decided to take a break. While traveling through Italy, she stumbled across Chigiana Musical Academy in Siena and enrolled in a film course taught by Luis Bacalov, a world-renowned composer who wrote the scores for Quentin Tarrantino’s Kill Bill and Michael Radford’s Il Postino (The Postman).
“I was a real rookie,” Shieh says. “People were composing on computers and keyboards but I was writing on sheets of paper so it was surprising that Bacalov took me under his wing.”
Shieh quickly learned how to compose music for the screen, eventually rewriting the musical score from the Italian horror film Scacchi, originally composed by Bacalov, and performed it for her final concert at the academy.
“There was one minute of silence after I played and, finally, Bacalov said one word, ‘perfect,’ and left the room,” Shieh says.
Her classmates told her later that reworking Scacchi was a risky venture, but the gamble paid off since her performance won her the Emma Constable Award.
FILM AND GAMES
Shieh says working on film music has been a humbling and rewarding experience.
“Classical performers are used to being the star of the show, but everything you do for film music has to serve the story,” Shieh says.
She adds that she enjoys the interaction that comes from collaborating with filmmakers, scriptwriters, actors and directors — all of which she wasn’t able to experience while practicing piano alone at home.
In addition to film, Shieh is currently working on online gaming music commissioned by major orchestras in Taiwan and Los Angeles. But she likes to balance the work by composing her own music. In her latest album Tango with Chopin (2014), the odd numbers on the track are her own compositions while the even numbers are by Chopin.
Shieh says there is something inherently freeing about composing music, whether it’s for film, online games or her own album.
“Composing music is like making a film or writing a book because we’re all trying to tell a story that will influence other people,” Shieh said.
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
March 9 to March 15 “This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn’t mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate. “Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added. Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
Last month, media outlets including the BBC World Service and Bloomberg reported that China’s greenhouse gas emissions are currently flat or falling, and that the economic giant appears to be on course to comfortably meet Beijing’s stated goal that total emissions will peak no later than 2030. China is by far and away the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, generating more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. As the BBC pointed out in their Feb. 12 report, “what happens in China literally could change the world’s weather.” Any drop in total emissions is good news, of course. By
RSS