Cultural Exchange Between Vietnam and US Yields Challenging Music
Students from Hanoi's National Academy of Music arrive in Los Angeles to particpate in the Ascending Dragon Music Festival with Southwest Chamber Music--photo courtesy Southwest Chamber
REVIEW…
Artistic Director of Southwest Chamber Music, Jeff von der Schmidt knows a challenge when he sees it.
“I’ve guided Southwest Chamber Music for 23 years toward just this type of project,” von der Schmidt says when discussing the first-of-a-kind exchange in the fractious relationship between Vietnam and the United States.
” ‘Ascending Dragon Music Festival and Cultural Exchange’ is the most ambitious, probably the first, formal festival of contemporary music ever on the Vietnamese cultural scene,” he continued. Von der Schmidt’s festival included a visit to both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and the bringing of 19 musicians and two Vietnamese composers to this country to complete the exchange.
Von der Schmidt and Jan Karlin, the Executive Director of Southwest Chamber, have visited Vietnam twice with 19 of its musicians, the last time a nearly three week visit to the Vietnam National Academy of Music in Hanoi and a brief stop in Ho Chi Minh City in March where the Pasadena-based ensemble performed American compositions in public concerts and offered student training sessions at the conservatory on a program underwritten by a number of foundations, private donors and the U.S. State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The exchange included an invitation for 19 conservatory students and two composers to come to Pasadena for a two-week festival that would re-unite the Southwest Chamber musicians and two American composers with the students and two Vietnamese composers.
The opening concert in the series was held Friday night at Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts in a program that offered the music of composers Alexandra du Bois and Kurt Rohde from U.S. (who were with Southwest on the journey to Vietnam) and Pham Minh Thanh and Vu Nhat Tan from Vietnam. All four were in the audience at the Armory to offer details of their music in a pre-concert talk presided over by von der Schmidt. Additional music performed was by Vietnamese composers Ton That Tiet and Nguyen Thien Dao. Visiting Academy musicians were stationed at the mezzanine level to watch the proceedings but did not participate in the program: they will in subsequent concerts and make appearances at local schools.
Du Bois’ “Chanson d’orage” (“Thunderstorm of Song”), in its West Coast premiere, opened with violinists Lorenz Gamma and Shalini Vijayan as a strong-willed, but still sweet song that Du Bois says is meant to show conflicts of the heart. Thanh’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, in a U.S. premiere, was played exquisitely by Gamma and pianist Ming Tsu which seemed to follow more along the Russian line, perhaps a reflection of Thanh’s extensive study at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Rohde’s “Obsession Toccata” in two movements with violinist Vijayan performing a most difficult piece, was meant Rohde said in his remarks, to demonstrate a sort of panicked frenzy with fragments from the Bach E-major Partita and other compositions. Solid playing by Vijayan showed no panic of any kind.
Ming Tsu at the piano performed Ton That Tiet’s “Truong Dzuong”, a 1980 work written as homage to his war-torn country and the boat people in their frenzied escape. Tsu brought the destruction, chaos and finally silence of death to expressive heights in her fine interpretation.
The final portion of the program introduced Bui Le Chi, one of Vietnam’s premiere players of the traditional Vietnamese instrument, the dan bau, to perform a work by Nguyen Thien Dao titled “Khoi Truong Chi”. The instrument has one string that is maneuvered with a handle that by moving changes pitch and adds vibrato—sort of a stringed Theremin. Tone and pitch reveal unusual emotional depths to listeners.
The final number on the program was Vu Nhat Tan’s “Green Silk Improvisation” given keen playing by ensemble members Jim Foschia, clarinet; Lynn Vartan, percussion; Shalini Vijayan, violin; Peter Jacobson, cello; and Tom Peters, electronic-computer-double bass; and joined by, in this open-phase improvisation, by composer Tan at the piano and Bui Le Chi, dan bau. Program notes proclaim that the composition is a new style that rejects borders and extends to all instruments a rich global perspective.
The next Festival concert is at 8:00 p.m., Saturday, April 24 at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, downtown Los Angeles. That program will focus on American composers Kurt Rohde, John Cage, Elliott Carter and Aaron Copland. The final two concerts in the Ascending Dragon Music Festival will be held at the Colburn School.
On April 30 and May 3 with works by Maurice Ravel, Pham Minh Thanh, Alexandra du Bois and Kurt Rohde, Claude Debussy, Ton That Tiet, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky. Ticket prices are $38; seniors, $28; students, $10. For information, please call (800) 726-7147.
By Bill Peters
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