Farewell, My Musical Taste

I arrived on the island with an older CD with several albums of MP3's burned on it. While I won't try and say that I don't listen to a lot of crap, I think I have a little bit of integrity when it comes to music selection. That all went out the window when my car rental agency called to say they needed to switch my car. I know I was supposed to be in a smaller class car, yes, smaller than a Toyota Corolla, but they gave me an upgrade due to availability. So I had to go meet the "new car" out at the curb one morning and didn't realize I was looking right at it because it was the same exact car, same color, just with a bit more mileage. They had someone come along willing to sign a one year lease so I had to switch into an older vehicle. I would soon realize that the real downgrade would be that this car's stereo could not read MP3's.

Now I'm stuck listening to iCRT, the local English language station. It actually has decent news, but the music and D.J. banter is quite awful. I am not exaggerating when I say on every segment I drive, I hear Lady Antebellum and Rhianna, and am embarrassed to say that I can't get either song out of my head. I decided I needed to do something about this and came across an upcoming performance of Farewell My Concubine performed by the Taipei Chinese Orchestra at Zhongshan Hall in Ximen. The first challenge was getting tickets.

I went online to their website and for some reason, on the Englisg version of the website, this particular performance did not show up. If I switched to Chinese, then it showed up. So I tried to work through it using Google Translator and got stuck when I needed to create an account, I forget exactly why. But being concerned that I wouldn't even be able to get them in the mail or select "Will Call", I thought it better to try and get them in person. They broker through the Eslite Bookstore so I stopped there on my way home from work.

I went to the main store in Xinyi and went down to the customer service desk in the basement. Not knowing what the language barrier might be, I printed out the webpage for this event in Chinese so I could at least show them what event I was looking for, then worry about selecting tickets. They ended up speaking English very well and I chose a seat in the 4th row orchestra, pretty close to center, for $15! At this point, I was wondering how cheezy this might be as you'd be lucky to get into a crappy Matthew Maconahay movie in NYC for 15 bucks. And there was no nonsense service charges on top a la Ticketmaster. Fifteen bucks out the door.

The ~1100 seat theater is located a couple blocks from the MRT station. The program was 5 pieces, the last of which was Farewell My Concubine but it had a very interesting build to it. The first thing that struck me during the first piece was that the orchestra was predominantly Chinese instruments. That may seem like, duh, but I've never seen an entire orchestra composed in such a way. I've seen that lone guy in the subway playing a "Chinese violin". The first piece showcased a woman, Kemei Jiang playing the jinghu and she was amazing.

For the second, Wu Wei, a Chinese guy from Berlin was playing the sheng, which is a handheld instrument with vertical pipes and 27 valves. I was so close I could hear the percussive sounds of his fingers tapping the body of the instrument. Wu Wei was often smiling and jumping around on stage, really getting into the performance, not like my experience with classical musicians.

The third piece was the most interesting as it featured Huun Huur Tu, a quartet of Siberian "throat singers". I couldn't even attempt to describe it other than to say their instruments looked like they were made 2,000 years ago, held together with rope. You'll have to see for yourself. They were playing a solo gig the next evening so they were worked into this program but they meshed really well with the orchestra.

There was an intermission after which a Finnish cellist, Anssi Karttunen took the stage for a Stravinsky-esque concerto for cello. Maybe he was just sandbagging, or maybe Finnish classical music isn't my thing, but his performance here paled in comparison to the climax, Farewell My Concubine.

This piece is meant to be a duel between the male and female characters of the opera. Kemei Jiang rejoined the stage to battle it out against the Finnish cellist and it was fantastic. He really came to life in this performance and it served as a great climax to the entire night. I'm very excited about the opportunities to see world class musicians within minutes of my home for the cost of a pizza. Now if I could only find a pizza here worth $15.