The Taipei Chinese Orchestra and the Ju Percussion Group are to livestream a free concert on Saturday to cheer up music fans amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ju Tzung-ching (朱宗慶), founder of the percussion group, on Wednesday said that although art performances are slowly reappearing in people’s lives as the pandemic subsides, the group is seeking different possibilities for the next phase of performing arts.
Invited by the orchestra, the group would collaborate with it on compositions that combine traditional and modern percussion compositions, Ju said.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Chinese Orchestra via CNA
Orchestra director and conductor Cheng Li-pin (鄭立彬) said that the orchestra’s previous two online concerts, which were held in March and last month, was widely praised and it hopes to continue to raise the global profile of Taiwanese musical groups through this collaboration.
The concert would feature Western and Eastern-style percussion pieces, including: A Starling’s Shower (八哥洗澡), which uses four percussion instruments to represent a bird’s fluttering wings and water play; No. 4 Drum Music (第四號鼓樂) by Chung Yiu-kwong (鍾耀光); Double Concerto by French composer Emmanuel Sejourne; Drum Race (飆鼓), a tailor-made double concerto by Hung Chien-hui (洪千惠) for percussionists Ju and An Chih-shun (安志順); and Dragons Rise and Tigers Leap (龍騰虎躍), a classical piece.
They are also to perform The Island Songs (島嶼之歌), which Hung composed especially for the Taipei orchestra and the Ju Percussion Group about the diligence and perseverance of Taiwanese, he said.
The concert, titled “East and West Music Fair” (聲東擊西), conducted by Singaporean Qu Chunquan (瞿春泉), is to take place at the National Concert Hall and be livestreamed on the groups’ YouTube channels, he added.
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