As of 04 March 2003 my qin - guqin - silkqin website has been expanded and re-opened at
www.silkqin.com.
The present iohk site is being reduced and will be removed.
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Upcoming Performances
11 April 2003 (Friday evening), at the Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall, I take part in a performance organized by ROI Productions; the other performers are qin players Wu Wenguang from Beijing, Tse Chun-yan from Hong Kong, and Hida Tatsushi from Japan, and the komungo player Cheong Dae-seog from Korea. I will play Song Yu Bei Qiu, Chu Ge and Yu Ge.
28/29 June 2003 (Saturday/Sunday), at the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Tivoli, New York: Silk Stone Moving. Stone walls in China photographed by Howard Finkelson will be projected, with my silk-string qin music (live and taped), and dance by Michael Mao Dance. I may also do a workshop.
Performance Themes
Passions of the Literati
27 July 2002, at the Chime conference in Sheffield, England, Dai Xiaolian and I had a recital entitled Passions of the Literati. The theme of the conference was "Sex, Love, and Romance: Reflections on the Passions in East Asian Music". Su Zheng of Wesleyan University provided commentary.
I play quite a few relevant melodies, many of them from Xilutang Qintong. My part of this recital included several of these:
The traditional venue for playing the qin was either alone in meditation, or in a small gathering of like-minded people where they might also look at paintings, recite poetry, do calligraphy: a traditional multi-media event. In several recitals I have tried to recapture this atmosphere by including Powerpoint projections of relevant images. Scenes illustrating guqin melodies includes examples of such images. Of particular note are:
The article historically informed qin performance was originally presented at the meeting of the ACMR (Association of Chinese Music Research) in Detroit, October 2001. I have presented this several times accompanied by relevant melodies.
Qin Music in Hangzhou at the time of Marco Polo
Many melodies in early handbooks are attributed to qin masters living in Hangzhou at the end of the Song dynasty. Performance of these melodies naturally connects with a talk on historically informed qin performance, and I hope some day to do a performance which would also include the sort of music Marco Polo might have heard when he returned to Italy. Relevant qin melodies include,
Recent performances with other qin players include,
23 November 2002 at the China Institute, New York, I took part in the New York Qin Society Second Annual Conference. I played Dunshi Cao, Xing Tan, Feng Qiu Huang and the sung version of Jiu Kuang.
7 October 2002, at Swarthmore College, with Wu Zhao, a recital and a presentation at a class on Chinese civilization.
7 September 2002, at the City Hall Theatre in Hong Kong, the Qin Recital of the Three Styles. My style was "reconstructed melodies using silk strings"; the other players were Tong Kin-woon (his personal style) and Jiang Kangsheng (a student of Bu Xuezhai and other famous qin masters in the 1950s).
1 June 2002, during my alumni weekend at Haveford College, I gave a small recital.
28 April 2002, on alumni weekend at the Asheville School, my old prep school, I gave the Founder's Day performance. Here is a letter to the students.
27 February 2001, City Hall Recital Hall, Hong Kong (My Farewell to Hong Kong, two days before ending my 24 years living there):
"Qin Recital by Tong and John Thompson"
The Chinese title of this recital was "Tang Tang Tang Tang": Tang for Tong Kin-woon, for my Chinese name, for the Tang dynasty qin he uses (with metal strings), and for the melodies with a Tang dynasty connection that I played (on a modern instrument but using silk strings).
Here is an outline of my contribution to the performance:
First half, the five pieces in Shen Qi Mi Pu, Folio I, which use Yellow Bell tuning:
Tong Kin-Woon played modern versions of some of these pieces and excerpts from reconstructions of other early pieces with Tang connections.