The Ivory League

Written by Pei Jun

Last Friday evening was our last session, and it was quite a different session compared to usual. Most of the time, we are dealing with piano and classical music. However, Shu Heng, Jia En and Xin Ying brought us something new & special.

Has any one imagined what Persian Market, Bumblebee, and Beethoven’s Pathetique have in common? Has anyone related classical music to pop songs? Games? Or cartoons? Indeed, Shu Heng showed us a new face of classical music. Do you play classical music with piano, violin and other western musical instrument? Then you are surely out-dated. Some can even play it using electric guitar and wine. WINE? Yes, wine, inside different-sized wine glasses!

After that, Jia En and Xin Ying led us to another new area, that is traditional Korean classical music. Overall, this is divided to three main parts: instruments, vocals and dance. There are few instruments were introduced which are Gayageum, Goemungo, Daegeum, Haegum and Salmunori. Jia En did a very pretty job in explaining the history, the structure and the way to play the instruments. Besides that, she also introduced the two types of vocals: pansori and arirang. We also watched the videos which showed these instruments are played as well as the vocals.

Of course, the music instruments and vocals are not for solo performance only. It can integrate into dance as well. And here we had Xin Ying showed us sword dance, court music with drum and mask dance.

I believe most of all are not familiar with these and cannot even tell the difference between a Gayageum from a zither. But thanks to the presenters’ explanation, I believe the last session is an “eye-opening” for us. Applause to the presenters!



Editor's note: Apologies for an overdue posting, there was some miscommunication... Also, here is a video of the Samulnori that was introduced (correct me if I'm wrong!): Samulnori - Korean drum performance 

All the best for everyone's exams :D

Hello fellow NUSPE-ians!


It's week 11! Why is that special? This Fri's (30th Oct) the last NUSPE session for the term! After this Friday, NUSPE will be having a break for all NUSPE-ians to have fun mugging :D





Coming up this Friday: a Music Appreciation session conducted by our very own music subcomm members Jia En, Xin Ying and Shu Heng!

Ever wanted to know more about Korean music? Korean classical music?

What do Persian Market, Bumblebee, and Beethoven's Pathetique have in common?

6.30 pm, Activity Room!

See you there!

Dear all,

There are two new and important announcements that we sent out on the yahoogroups today, please take note of them ya.

1) Masterclasses this weekend by a local music school, "My Musical Chamber" with Dr Catherine Lan. More details of the masterclass can be found in the attachments in the yahoogroup email.

If you would like to go for the Sunday masterclass, we need your responses by tomorrow, Thursday 29 Oct 09, so we can submit a namelist. Urgent urgent!

2) Room booking for the last week of November and first week of December.

The CFA Chinese Instrumental Examinations will be ongoing during this time. Please DO NOT book any studio rooms for practice during this two-week period, specifically from 21st Nov 2009 (Sat) to 6th Dec 2009 (Sun). These rooms will be used by the examiners and those taking the exams.

Full details are in the email :)

Do check your nuspe email accounts frequently!
Also, all the best for CA2s/ term papers / assignments/ etc. :D

Cheers,
Merilyn

By Yuek Ling


Last Friday evening's session was an “ear-opening” one, with NUSPE Concertino III showcasing some unrevealed talents who did not have the chance to perform in other major concerts. Quite a variety of repertoire was presented, ranging from Bach to Tan Dun and even Final Fantasy. In contrast with other piano concerts, music of various genres was presented in Concertino III; not only the conventional piano solo and duet music were performed, but also music that was accompanied by voice and violin.


Of course, the evening was an “eye-opening” one too. I’m sure that the audience members were relatively attracted by the powerful and enthusiastic performances, such as Suggestion Diabolique that filled the Activity Room with tension and thrill, and O Polichinelo that stunned the audience with speedy finger-sliding (glissando) across the keyboard. Concertino III reached its climax when the last piece The Jupiter was performed. It was both entertaining and enjoyable to see the duet pianists swapping their seats while the melody flowed on.


To conclude, Concertino III had served its purpose of being a platform for music lovers to perform on stage while the audience soaked in the appreciation of piano and other instrumental/vocal music. Let’s have another round of applause to all the performers and organizers!! *clap clap*

Greetings earthlings!

Hope all is going well in Week 10 for everyone. 10 is a special number. Why? Because it means you're just 3 weeks away from the end of semester.

To take your restless minds off essays for awhile, everyone (invite your friends :D) is officially invited to Concertino III this Friday in the AR. This is an internal platform concert that takes place once a semester and a great opportunity for you to check out the hidden talents in NUSPE that have not had the chance so far to perform.

The concert which starts at 6.30pm, and ends at 7.45pm(our usual session time) features what looks like a majorly interesting programme:

Waltz in Ab Major, Op. 34 No. 1
Frédéric Chopin

Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48 No. 1
Frédéric Chopin

Blumenlied, Op. 39
Gustav Lange

Suggestion Diabolique, Op. 4 No. 4
Sergei Prokofiev

Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G Minor
Johannes Brahms

Ave Maria
Johann Sebastian Bach (arr. Charles Gounod)

Final Fantasy X: Sad Romance
Thao Nguyen Xanh

Schwanengesang: Ständchen
Franz Schubert

Toccata in G Major - Allegro e Presto BWV 916
Johann Sebastian Bach

Capriccio in G minor, Op. 116 No. 3
Johannes Brahms

Capricho Catalan from España, Op. 165 No. 5
Isaac Albéniz

Sonata in E-flat Major (3rd movement) Hob. 16 No. 52
Joseph Haydn

Staccato Beans from 8 Memories in Watercolor, Op. 1
Tan Dun

O Polichinelo
Heitor Villa-Lobos

The Jupiter
Gustav Holst (arr. Yasuhide Ito)

To find out who is playing, you'll just have to come down. *winkwink* So, don't forget! This Friday, 6.30pm in the AR.

- Do be punctual, we'll start at 6.30pm SHARP and will only admit latecomers during suitable breaks in the programme. If you need to leave halfway, also please do so only during the breaks in the programme.

- As in keeping with an actual recital, do be quiet while the performers are playing. Hope you haven't forgotten the lesson in audience etiquette during the 3rd session! :p

PY

Alrighty, as noted,

Here's a couple of piano-related events in the next few days!

Emanuel Ax Piano Masterclass


Mon, 19 Oct 09 (if this is not too late for you by now...)
3pm, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music
Free admission

Students from YST will be performing for those of you who are big fans of the Conservatory. Some of us might have heard Emanuel Ax perform Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the SSO earlier this year and I'm sure we'll agree it was one of the most beautiful things on earth.
 
You can find more October events at YST at this place: http://music.nus.edu.sg/02_whatson_oct.html. :) 
 
The Joy of Piano


Tue & Wed, 20 & 21 Oct 09
8pm, UCC Theatre
Free admission, but limited tickets will be available at the door at 7pm.

Winners of the Hong Kong Piano Competition Jinsang Lee (Tue, 20 Oct 09) and Ilya Rashkovskiy (Wed, 21 Oct 09) will be performing.

Please click this link http://www.nus.edu.sg/cfa/artzone/EMCC_JoyOfPiano.html to find out more.

If you'd like to go (and invite your friends along too), maybe you can let us know (via the comments, the blog's tagboard, yahoogroups, any exco member or via email nus.pianoensemble@gmail.com) and we can make it a NUSPE group outing :D

Contributed by Yingbo

“Classical music is enough for life, but life is not enough for classical music.” This was the most sophisticated and interesting sentence that we heard from this session.

It was such an enjoyable session that when it ended, most members left the activity room with a smile on their faces. Usually, talking about the composers can get quite boring. However, the organisers from the Music subcommittee came up with a bright idea - to talk about the death of these composers, which makes for an attractive topic. (Editor’s note: It also ties in with Halloween ;) ) During the whole session, the people around tried to make some guesses about how these composers died. Luckily most of us got the correct answers. Of course, this is not a session to talk only about deaths. After telling us how these composers died, John and Mark also told us interesting stories about them to help us understand their life more deeply. We learned quite a lot about the composers from this whole session. It was really a great session~~~


The composers we learned about today were and still are all great people in the history of classical music. However, some died at a relative young age and in relatively strange ways (such as shaving cuts and insect bites). Perhaps these composers devoted all of their time and enthusiasm to classical music. They used their limited lifetimes to compose unlimited beautiful pieces. Thanks to them, we can still enjoy their great pieces as well as the idea behind the music today~~~

To sum up, this session was really great. We do appreciate the efforts the organisers put in. Hopefully we will also have an enjoyable session such as this the next time~~~

Edit: We've uploaded the powerpoint slides & answers on the nuspe & nuspe09 yahoogroups (: