Chamber group plays miniatures inspired by visual art
By Eric Haines
post-gazette.com

Art imitated art at The Andy Warhol Museum on Monday evening.

An overflow crowd in the museum theater heard Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra co-principal bassoonist David Sogg lead a cadre of his PSO colleagues and pianist Robert Frankenberry in a concert aptly titled "Sonic Canvases," which featured compositions inspired by visual art and artists.

Sogg and Frankenberry opened the program with Joan Huang's "Galerie Chinoise Post-'89," a six-movement duet for bassoon and piano inspired by Chinese artwork of the post-Tiananmen massacre era.

Huang learned traditional music from local Chinese farmers when she was sent into agricultural labor for "re-education" during China's Cultural Revolution. After the revolution, she earned degrees at the newly reopened Shanghai Conservatory of music. In "Galerie Chinoise," she juxtaposes many of the folk tunes she learned on the farm with sophisticated counterpoint, chromatic lyricism and martialistic ostinato.

Southwest travels an eastern route to get to Mozart
By Josef Woodard
Los Angeles Times

As Southwest Chamber Music continued its current season under the umbrella title "Global Wanderings," Saturday night at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, the question of the rest of the world's effect on Western classical music sneaked into the mix. "Global Wanderings" seemed a relevant but also relative term, in a series that willfully veers out of the Euro centric repertoire ut also comes home to that base.

Saturday's program (to be repeated tonight at the Colburn School of Music) headed to points east but landed squarely back in the land of conventional chamber-music plenty with Mozart's Quintet in A for Clarinet and Strings. We got Indonesian-inspired writing from the late Lou Harrison, who lived in Northern California most of his life. And composer Joan Huang displayed the Invention and vibrancy of her East-West musical vocabulary, leaning only semi wistfully toward her native Chinese heritage.

Harrison's "Songs in the Forest" opened the concert tenderly, with its varied three-part structure conveying in turn cool introspection, vigorous rhythmic kneading and long-lined lyricism. The flavor was Indonesian, as per Harrison's wont, but translated to Western instrumentation, with Beth Plueger on flute and piccolo, Shalini Vijayan on violin, Ming Tsu on piano and Lynn Vartan on vibraphone and marimba.

Vartan returned on marimba to supply the requisite woody grace and evocation for two of Huang's compact but alluring pieces, "Dragons Rising Tigers Leaping" matches the energy of its title with a brightness and restlessness of spirit, all clear pentatonic colors and tonal unrest, punctuated by smeared clusters of notes. The active and wide-ranging score kept the impressive Vartan on her feet.

Huang's "The Legend of Chang-e," with Vartan joined by Jijayan, is a more abstract piece in some ways but also more imbued with an underlying narrative design. The interactive energies of the players and regular shifts of dynamics and tonality suggest a storyteller's art.

After intermission, the Mozart, played lovingly by a quintet featuring clarinetist Jim Foschia, rounded out the evening with its amalgam of comfort, joy and clarity.

The Performance of Southwest Chamber Music
By Qing Yang Hu
Chinese World Daily

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Our journalist Ms. Qing Yang Hu reporting in Los Angels: For celebrating the Chinese New Year, the GRAMMY AWARD winning Southwest Chamber Music will hold two concerts at 8:00 PM, January 29, 2005 in Pasadena Norton Simon Museum Theater and at 8:00 PM, February 1, 2005 in downtown Colburn School of Performing Arts, Herbert Zipper Hall. They will perform Chinese composer Joan Huang’s works. Welcome every music lover to come.

The spokeswoman of the Southwest Chamber Music pointed out that, for celebrating the Chinese New Year, we specially chose Joan Huang’s Dragon Rising and Tiger Leaping and The Legend of Chang-e to collocate with Lou Harrison’s Songs in the Forest as the first half of the concert. The second half we chose W.A. Mozart’s Quintet in A Major For Clarinet & Strings, K. 581. These four pieces cover classical, modern and avant-garde styles.

Joan Huang got her both bachelor and master degree in Composition from the Shanghai Music Conservatory in 1983 and 1986, and her PhD in Composition from UCLA in 1991, She felt honored that the prestigious Southwest Chamber Music has nearly with two decades of history picked her The Legend of Chang-e (it won the first prize of The International Marimolin Composition Contest in 1994) and the recently finished Dragon Rising and Tiger Leaping. These two pieces combined traditional Chinese musical language and the Western contemporary compositional techniques. Besides, Dragon Rising and Tiger Leaping will be the world premier.

Joan Huang recalled the hardship she suffered during the time of growing up and especially cherished the achievements of today. Born in Shanghai and began learning music under the influence of her parents, she was assigned to the Shanghai Star-Fire Farm to do the heavy manual work for three years. She won the audition at the reopening of the Composition Department at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She studied with Professor Sang Tong, Ye Chunzhi and Liu Dunnan.

Joan Huang changed her composition style when she came to UCLA and began to pursue a style of fusion of Chinese traditional musical language with Western contemporary compositional techniques. She has won many compositional awards. Her works have beer performed by Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Pacific Symphony, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Cleveland Chamber Orchestra and etc.

There will be 30 minutes of previews before the performances of January 29 and February 1. Joan Huang and the conductor of the Southwest Chamber Music, Jeff von der Schmidt will exchange with audiences face to face. The prices for these two performances are: $25 for general admission, $20 for senior citizens and $10 for students with student identification. For tickets, please call: 1-800-726-7141.

Addresses: Norton Simon Museum Theater, 411 West Colorado Blvd, Pasadena; Colburn School of Performing Arts, 200 S. Grand Ave. L.A.