Echoes of Taiwanese Music: Songs of the Island

Simple, heartfelt Taiwanese folk songs, lingering Hakka mountain songs, Indigenous songs full of the rhythms of mountain and sea, and artistically layered contemporary choral works — this land of Taiwan has given birth to countless beautiful songs that have been sung and passed on for centuries. These songs are not only brilliant treasures of Taiwanese music, but also an inexhaustible source of inspiration for generations of composers. Through arrangement, collage, and expansion, songs of earlier eras find new life in choral form, with many voices interweaving into the rich sound of their times and passed on from generation to generation. Newly composed contemporary choral works, in turn, build on this foundation to write another dazzling chapter in the story of Taiwanese choral music.

The Taiwan Music Institute of the National Center for Traditional Arts has long been dedicated to promoting and preserving Taiwanese music. Grounded in the aim of documenting the historical development of Taiwanese choral music, the Institute commissioned the Taipei Chamber Singers to plan a concert of “Classic Choral Works by Taiwanese Music Masters,” accompanied by an audiovisual release, in the hope of creating an exemplary archive of Taiwanese choral music. Over more than twenty years since its founding, the Taipei Chamber Singers has continually cultivated Taiwanese choral music — from the folk and popular song repertoire of its “Listening” series to the premieres of contemporary commissioned works in its “Music Unlimited” series — carrying forward Taiwan’s classics while making its voice heard abroad. This makes TCS the natural choice for the Taiwan Music Institute’s commission of “Classic Choral Works by Taiwanese Music Masters.”