Kronos Quartet and Wu Man, Pipa
A Chinese Home
Kronos Quartet and Wu Man return to the Center with two works that illuminate multiple layers of Chinese culture, ancient and modern.
The program will open with Tan Dun's Ghost Opera, featuring music, text and installation by the composer. In this work of lush visual and aural complexity, Tan Dun creates what he calls "a dialogue between past and future, spirit and nature, based on the shamanistic customs of Chinese peasant culture."
The program's second half, A Chinese Home (co-commissioned by the Clarice Smith Center), is a multi-media exploration of China’s passage through the 20th Century and into the 21st. Conceived by Wu Man, David Harrington and stage director Chen Shi-Zheng The Peony Pavilion, the work incorporates a vast array of traditional and contemporary Chinese music; archival and modern projected images; and unexpected – and often humorous – elements of staging and design.
A Chinese Home was inspired by the extraordinary story of Yin Yu Tang, a 300-year-old house from a southeastern Chinese village that was dismantled piece-by-piece at the turn of the millennium and rebuilt in the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts. Wu Man describes Yin Yu Tang as “the key for us to unlock the past and explore the music of China, not only from the time of this particular house, but across the centuries.” The staged work is structured in four parts of approximately ten minutes each: “Return,” “Shanghai,” “The East is Red” and “Made in China.” Transitional audio and video elements separate and connect the sections. The total duration is approximately 45 minutes, and will comprise the entire second half of the evening’s program. A Chinese Home is performed without pause.
A recorded soundscape incoporating multiple sound sources will provide a transition between the two programs during intermission.
Estimated Runtime: 1 hour and 40 minutes, including one 20-minute intermission.
A Chinese Home was co-commissioned by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
$42/ 9 Students
Friday, February 12, 2010
8:00 pm - Ina and Jack Kay Theatre
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
You can also learn more about the music and its creators at the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library's website.
Free Shows: Unless otherwise noted, seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Priced Shows: For tickets please call 301-405-ARTS or click here to order online. (Web sales end two hours prior to a performance.)
