Alike - Unlike
Musical Interchanges
A joint project by Ensemble 2e2m and Chai Found Music Workshop
As the title suggests, this project is a truly cross-cultural Contemporary Music event. Composers from France, Taiwan, and China have written original works for a joint project of two contemporary ensembles, which are considered world class in their own right and culture. Aside from all clichés, this project is Contemporary Music at its best and most daring. Audiences are invited to listen for the convergences and the differences in Western and Eastern music cultures and the moments when both become one.
Under the title ‘Alike - Unlike’, Ensemble 2e2m and Chai Found Music Workshop team up to perform joint concerts, which are conducted by Pierre Roullier, the artistic director of Ensemble 2e2m. The instrumentation is as follows: Clarinet, Accordion, Violin, Cello on the Western side; Pipa (Chinese lute), Erhu (Chinese violin), Gucheng (Chinese zither), and Di (Chinese bamboo flute) on the Eastern side.
Alike - Unlike premiered on October 24, 2008 at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. It featured 5 world-premieres of works by composers Hwang-Long Pan (Taiwan), Yi Xu (China/France), Xiao-Yong Chen (China-Germany), Laurent artin, and Bernard Cavanna (both France).
Musicians
Eric Crambes - Violin
Frédéric Baldassare - Cello
Pascal Contet - Accordion
Véronique Fèvre - Clarinet, Bass Clarinet
Chen-Ming Huang - Erhu
Hui-Kuan Lin - Pipa
Chung-Hsien Wu - Di
I-Hsien Lin - GuzhengPierre Roullier - Conductor
Program
Hwang Long Pan: East and West IV
For Clarinet, Cello, Violin, Accordion, Erhu, Pipa, Gucheng, Di
Yi Xu: Dan
For Clarinet, Cello, Violin, Pipa, Gucheng, Di
Bernard Cavanna: Taiwan-2e2m
For Clarinet, Cello, Violin, Accordion, Erhu, Pipa, Gucheng, Di
Laurent Martin: Lento
For Erhu, Cello, Bass Clarinet
Xiaoyong Chen:
Transmutation and Evolvement for Mixed Ensemble
For Clarinet, Cello, Violin, Accordion, Erhu, Pipa, Gucheng, DI
All Videos were recorded at National Concert Hall Taipei/Taiwan on October, 24, 2008.
With the friendly permission of the composers.
Composers
Hwang-Long Pan 潘皇龍
Taiwan
Hwang-Long Pan graduated from National Taiwan Normal University in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts in music. From 1974-76 he studied composition, theory, and counterpoint with Hans Ulrich Lehmann and Robert Blum in Zurich/Switzerland. After graduating, he continued his studies with Helmut Lachenmann in Hannover/Germany and with Isang Yun in Berlin. Upon his return to Taiwan he became associate professor at the National Institute of the Arts in Taipei. As a full professor, he taught composition from 1991-2008, and served as dean of the music department at Taipei National University of the Arts from 2002 to 2008.
Pan twice received the prestigious National Taiwan Art Award and is active in several national music associations. He is also co-founder of the Modern Music Centre and the Taiwanese section of the ISCM (International Society of Contemporary Music) of which he currently is the president.
While making use of the entire array of modernist and avant-garde techniques, Pan’s music is often inspired by Chinese philosophical or mythical concepts.
A few groups who have performed Hwang-Long Pan’s music: Austrian Ensemble for New Music (1980-), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (1982), Ensemble InterContemporain (1983), Ju Percussion Group (1986-), Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra (1986-), Arditti String Quartet (1988), Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (1990), Klangforum Vienna (2004), Forum Music Group (1996-), Chai Found Music Workshop (1996-).
East and West IV - 東南西北 IV
For Clarinet, Cello, Violin, Accordion, Erhu, Pipa, Gucheng, Di
Among my compositions from the early 1970’s to the late 1990’s are ‘Chien-Huai’, ‘Wandlungsphasen’, ‘Kaleidoscope’, ‘Formosa Landscape’, and ‘Labyrinth-Promenade’. In 1988, I started two series of new works : ‘Solo’ and ‘East and West’.
The features of East and West IV: The orchestration combines instruments from the Eastern and the Western world. New theories and practices of composing are disclosed in modes, structures and tone-rows, thus aiming at conciliating the cultures of the East and the West. Accordingly, I have composed this octet for Chai Found Music Workshop and Ensemble 2e2m.
To reflect our situation of crossing over from the 20th to the 21st century, I maintained the characteristic features and traditional usage of each individual instrument while at the same time exploring new tone-rows, tonalities, and structures. East and West IV is built upon the correlation of three rows which are different from each other in their particular way. Together they determine the piece’s pitch structure. To allow for variety and maximum amount of possibilities, some pitches are repeated or omitted. Moreover, they are not limited to a particular octave.
This composition is dedicated to Chai Found Music Workshop and Ensemble 2e2m.
Yi Xu 徐儀
China / France
Yi Xu was born in Nanjing, China. At a very young age, she took up the erhu (Chinese violin). After switching to violin she attended the Shanghai Conservatory where she later took up composition classes. At the age of 22, the conservatory hired her as a teacher.
In 1988 she arrived in France and studied at the IRCAM and the Paris Conservatory of Music with Gérard Grisey and Ivo Malec. There she obtained a first prize for composition in 1994 for her piece “Huntun”. As the first composer of Chinese origin, she was awarded the Prix de Rome, and lived in the Villa Medici in Rome/Italy from 1996 to 1998.
From 2001-2003 she taught composition at the Cergy-Pontoise National Conservatory of Music. Presently she lives in Beijing and is a visiting professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
Yi Xu has written over 30 works, which have been performed at numerous festivals and broadcasted in China, Japan, the U.S., Brazil, Canada and Europe, where several monographic concerts of her music took place. She has received commissions from the French government, Radio France, and many festivals and ensembles. Her piece “The Fullness of Emptiness” was selected by the French Ministry of Education for the final high school music exam.
A monographic disc of her works is distributed by Harmonia Mundi. Yi Xu’s works are published by Henry Lemoine in Paris.
Dan - 淡
For Clarinet, Cello, Violin, Pipa, Gucheng, Di‘Dan’ - insipidity - is inward turned detachment, indifference, peace, wisdom.
Lao-Zi said: “Music and good food stop the passer-by. When it passes through our mouth, the Tao is without taste. It cannot be seen, It cannot be heard, but It is inexhaustible and boundless.”
Zhuang-Zi said: “Let your heart evolve in the detachment from insipidity, unite your vital breath with the overall lack of differentiation. If you embrace the spontaneous movement of things, without allowing yourself any individual preference, the whole world will be at peace.”
Bernard Cavanna
France
Bernard Cavanna was born in 1951 in Nogent sur Marne/France. At the age of nine, he began to study the piano and soon became interested in composition which, for the most part, he studied on his own, occasionally meeting and exchanging views with composers Henri Dutilleux, Aurèle Stroë, Paul Méfano and Georges Aperghis, who all strongly encouraged him.
In 1984, he received the annual scholarship for creation, in 1985 the Prix de Rome, in 1998 the Prix SACEM for the best contemporary music piece, followed by the International Rostrum of Composers of the UNESCO and the prestigious Grand Prize for Music of the SACD in 2007.
Attracted by film and stage, Cavanna was led to working with prominent figures of the French theater, dance, and film scene. He has written a vast collection of instrumental and vocal works from solos to orchestra scores and operas.
He is one of the most often played living composers in France and Europe. A critic of the newspaper Le Monde wrote: “Cavanna is a gifted and eloquent musician, whose powerful writing works and unfolds itself in a climate of fierce expressivity.”
Cavanna is the director of the Gennevilliers National Music Conservatory near Paris. He is involved with the small Théâtre du Plateau in Paris, and serves as the chairman of the Ensemble 2e2m.
Bernard Cavanna’s music is published by Editions Musicales Européennes.
Taïwan-2e2m
For Clarinet, Cello, Violin, Accordion, Erhu, Pipa, Gucheng, Di
This piece was written by using elements of my Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra. It has a simple form: verse and chorus. Both solo instruments (violin and cello) are designed as a single, almost hybrid instrument. The difficult management of the bow makes virtuosity predominant.
The thematic material used by the two solo instruments issimple: it relies on a measure of the prelude to the 3rd Bach partita. Sometimes chopped, sometimes striated like a muscle, the timing of the other instruments (two Western and four traditional Chinese) is in opposition to the continuo of the two soloists. The former rely on pentatonic modes, pentatonic overlays or simply the basic tone of the note Re.
Laurent Martin
France
Laurent Martin studied composition at the Conservatoire of Paris. His professors, among others, were Alain Bancquart, Gérard Grisey, and Betsy Jolas. After his studies, he was a resident at the Villa Medici in Rome, in Czech Republic, in Greece and at the Casa de Velazquez in Madrid. He was awarded the Lili Boulanger prize by the Boston University in Massachussetts for the monographic recordings of his works by Ensemble 2e2m which was released in 2001. After a long stay in Japan, he was composer in residence at the Musikene Music School in San Sebastian/Spain in 2001.
His music, which was described as “...penetrating, springing up, too ironical to ever be deemed sentimental...” is characterized by a constant use of microtonality in pursue of lightness and variety of shapes.
So far Laurent Martin has composed some thirty pieces ranging from solos to large orchestra with a partiality for smaller ensembles.
Lento
For Erhu, Cello, and Bass ClarinetThe three instruments come into a pulsation which is regular and very slow. Their timbres are based in a combination of very long notes and an extensive use of vibrato. The extreme length of the sounds produces a succession of contemplative harmonic relations in quarter-tones, a sort of counterpoint without melisma. From time to time yet, the timbres of the three instruments join in on a phrase played at a loud volume. In variations, this phrase emerges five times and reintegrates itself back into the motionless structure of the piece.
Xiao-Yong Chen
China / Germany
Xiao-Yong Chen was born in Beijing. He began his studies at the Central Conservatory of Beijing and continued with György Ligeti in Hamburg from 1985 to 1989.
Many of Chen’s compositions were commissioned by international festivals, orchestras, radio stations, ensembles, and universities from Austria, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Portugal, Switzerland, USA, Taiwan. His works have been performed at the Musiktage Donaueschingen, the Holland Festival, the Asian Music Festival in Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong, the Tanglewood Festival and others.
He has worked with prominent German, European and Asian symphony orchestras and celebrated chamber music groups and contemporary ensembles such as Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Intercontemporain and Ensemble 2e2m (Paris), Klangforum Vienna, Auryn Quartet, Arditti String Quartet. The German Chamber Philharmonic Bremen produced a portrait CD of his works in 1999.
Since 2005, he is a member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg, since 2006 a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, since 2007 the artistic advisor of the Centre for Contemporary Music at the Danube University, Austria.
Xiaoyong Chen lives in Hamburg and Shanghai.
His works are published by Internationale Musikverlage Sikorski Hamburg.
Transmutation and Evolvement for Mixed Ensemble
For Clarinet, Cello, Violin, Accordion, Erhu, Pipa, Gucheng, Sheng
This chamber music piece is composed of short sections. There are stark contrasts between those sections, but their continuous connection constitutes a whole. The title of the piece, links closely to the music and the instruments with their specific timbres. Through a variety of sound patterns they evoke a variety of associations in people’s minds. If we assume that the beginning point of music is the ending point of sound, the design of the sound can show feelings of the innermost kind.
The piece represents the understanding of my personal experiences of life, cultural conflicts and cultural melting: What is Chinese music? What will the future of Chinese music be like? Will the art of the future be founded on tradition? If so, why? In the era of globalization we still live in specific cultural environments, but also in immediate contact with the unknown in its full diversity. Some parts of the past will never belong to you. You might look at them, but you cannot see them. All this creates a gigantic power that changes us silently. And we ask ourselves: who am I?
What is it that artists are looking for? Is it the things that people are long familiar with, or still feel strange about? Things old and dated or brand-new? Are we at ease with them or...
Media Response
China Times, Taipei - October 24, 2008 Cultural News
Chai Found Music Workshop and Ensemble 2e2m - Pipa loves Violin
Through a new way of thinking in Contemporary Music, the clearly drawn line that once separated East and West, has become more and more faint, for them [the West] as well as for us [the East].
On October 24, the National Concert Hall stages a concert by two groups, the French Contemporary Ensemble 2e2m and the Taiwan Sizhu Group Chai Found Music Workshop. The idea is to make the two become one: pipa and violin will sit close together, sheng and accordion will sing for each other, and thus create a different listening experience.
2e2m, founded in 1971, is a pioneer in French Contemporary Classical music. Chai Found Music Workshop, founded 20 years after 2e2m, has devoted itself both to Sizhu and Contemporary Music, and has been invited this year by composer Xiao-Yong Chen to Hamburg to play with the NDR Symphony Orchestra.
In this concert, nine Taiwanese and French performers will play five new pieces by composers from Taiwan, China, and France. Xiao-Yong Chen graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and then continued to the Hamburg Music University. His teacher was Hungarian master composer Gyorgi Ligeti. Xiao-Yong Chen says: “In the discipline of instrumentation there is a saying that Chinese shen and Western accordion have family relations.” That is why he makes use of the interplay between the two instruments in his piece ‘Transfomation and Evolvement for Mixed Ensemble’.
Hwang-Long Pan’s composition ‘East and West No. 4’ focuses on the gucheng. Because he felt that the low range of the instrument is too strong, he lowered the low range of it for six degrees to make the sound softer.
Composer Yi Xu was born in China and lived in France. Her piece “The Fullness of Emptiness” was selected by the French Ministry of Education as a sample for the final high school music exam. Her composition ‘Dan’, which is being performed this time, emphasizes “light” and uses music to show ancient philosophic concepts of Yuan-Ming and Lao-Tse.
Downloads
Video ClipsExcerpts as Mp4 [zipped files in folder, automatic download]
Mp3s
Excerpts [zipped files in folder, automatic download]
Contact Information
For Asia and the Americas, please contact:
Chai Found Music Workshop
2 F, No.13, Lane 295, Lung Jiang Rd., Taipei, Taiwan
fel +886-2-25024960
fax +886-2-25158553
e-mail promotion@cfmw.com.tw
www.cfmw.com.tw
For Europe, please contact:
Ensemble 2e2m
15, Bd Gabriel Péri, 94500 Champigny, France
tel +33147061776
fax +33148822645
e-mail ens2e2m@wanadoo.fr
www.ensemble2e2m.com
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