Music Unlimited 10: Contemporary Choral Works from East Asia

Fri 22 Dec, 7:30 pm, National Recital Hall, Taipei

Outstanding East Asian composers × Asia’s foremost contemporary voices

Creating a new canon of contemporary music from the East

Conductor / Yun-Hung Chen

Piano / Nai-Chia Wang

Performed by / Taipei Chamber Singers

Music Unlimited 10

Over more than a decade, Taipei Chamber Singers’ Music Unlimited project has not only established TCS’s irreplaceable standing in contemporary choral music, but has also grown into Asia’s leading platform for contemporary vocal music.

In 2017, Music Unlimited 10 brings together the creative energy of East Asia, inviting outstanding composers from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Beijing to start from the material of their own cultures and show how the regional cultures of East Asia are reflected, each in its own way, in contemporary vocal art.

Although the cultures of East Asia have influenced one another throughout history, they differ markedly in substance and expression, giving the region a cultural character at once shared and distinct. Since the twentieth century, the countries of East Asia have all faced the sweeping infiltration, spread and even impact of Western modern musical techniques and culture. How can composers, working from the soil of their own cultures, reconstruct tradition, reflect on modernity, and create sounds and values unique to Eastern voices, in response to the many cultural and intellectual challenges that Eastern vocal art faces in an age of globalization? This is what makes the commissioned premieres of Music Unlimited 10 so eagerly anticipated!

Commissioned Composers / Program

Kyoungja Kim (South Korea) / Ganggangsullae (羌羌水越來; 강강술래)

Tsang Yip Fat Richard (Hong Kong) / Eastern Hills – Reminiscence of Classic of Poetry (東山─詩經古懷)

Chihchun Chi-sun Lee (Taiwan) / Sounds of Autochthon (原聲、源音、緣響)

Koji Nakano (Japan) / Spiritual Forest (精靈之森; 精霊の森)

Wenchen Qin (Beijing) / The Sun Shadow X – The Sky (太陽的影子Ⅹ－天空)