It wasn’t just extraordinary music with a few surprises tucked in, as fans of Jung-Ho Pak and the San Diego Chamber Orchestra have come to expect. The Asian Silk Road concert, performed to a sold-out audience Friday night at St. Paul’s Cathedral, downtown, left the audience members breathless as they stood for a spontaneous ovation.
It was so much more than a concert – an inspiring “experience” that drew the audience in and included some fascinating education along the way. As one middle school student said, “It was super cool, and I learned a lot!”
Three international virtuosos were featured in authentic pieces that demonstrated their extraordinary technique and passion: Min Xiao-Fen on the Chinese pipa (guitar), Masayo Ishigure on the Japanese koto, and Münir Becken on the Turkish oud. Traditional classical music by the masters Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Ravel and Puccini was also be featured.
Pipa player/vocalist Min Xiao-Fen, internationally known for her virtuosity and fluid style, has received high acclaim for her classical, new music and jazz performances. After learning the pipa from her father, a pipa master in China, and performing with the Nanjing National Music Orchestra, she began working with composers Zhou Long, Carl Stone and Chen Yi and recorded The Moon Rising (Cala), hailed by BBC Music Magazine as “one of the best CDs of 1996.” She has been featured as a composer and soloist with renowned orchestras worldwide, as well as for several film scores. She also performs with the Blue Pipa Trio, a jazz ensemble that she founded. www.bluepipa.org
Masayo Ishigure began playing the koto and jiut shamisen at the age of five in Japan. After initial studies with Tadao and Kazue Sawai, she became a special research student at the Kawai Koto Academy of Music. The aim of the academy was to shed new light on koto music by incorporating everything from Bach to jazz. Since then, Ms Isigure has performed all over the world and has been featured in television broadcasts as well as in many TV commercials. She, along with Yitzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma and others, also recorded music for the soundtrack of the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. She is currently teaching koto and shamisen at Westleyan University (CT) and offers private lessons in the New York metropolitan area.
Münir Beken grew up in the “old world” of Istanbul, living on the more suburban Asian side of Istanbul, but commuting to the European side by ferry for classes at the conservatory so he could become, as he says, “a serious composer or performer of western music. The diversity of my education provided me with the tools to understand the musical universe as a whole.” He received his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland and has studied with some of the most important 21st century composers, including Lukas Foss and Philip Glass, and his compositions have been performed in some of the most significant concert halls in the world. He is an accomplished performer on the Turkish oud, a stringed instrument.
“I am absolutely fascinated with the influence of Asian culture on western music, not just in today’s world, but for the past several centuries,” says Maestro Pak. “This unique concert has something for everyone - those who love traditional classical music from Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Puccini and Rimsky-Korsakov and those adventuresome music lovers who want to hear how the cultures have influenced each other through music.”
