Reviews
Event
Music celebration
Next month, Hong Kong Academy for Performance Art will host the Juilliard School international master-class and concert series to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Chinese government's regaining of sovereignty over Hong Kong.
Students from conservatories of Beijing and Shanghai will take part in these master classes. Founded in 1905, New York's Juilliard School has brought up many Chinese world-class music masters, such as violoncellist Yo-yo Ma and pianist Feng Jingxi.
From June 6, the series will be run over three weeks. Stephen Clapp, Edith Bers and Yoheved Kaplinsky from Juilliard School will teach 18 Chinese students. Afterward, they will present three concerts for local music fans.
Wen Jiao
DVD
Giant
Directed by George Stevens, starring Rock Hudson, James Dean
You might need a packed lunch, maybe even an accompanying dinner if you're intent on plowing through Giant in one sitting. With a running time of 202 minutes, it's a saga all right, although its epic ambitions are thwarted by a tendency to drift into vapid melodrama. And even for a film this long, there is so much ground to cover - East versus West, generation gaps, racism, emergence of industry, love, heartbreak and parenthood - that it spreads itself thin.
Dean plays Jett Rink, a farmhand who is frowned upon by his boss, wealthy ranch owner Bick Benedict (Hudson). Jett also has a crush on Bick's wife, Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), and when he strikes it rich through oil he amasses a fortune to rival his former employer.
Still, the reasons that Jett becomes miserable remain unclear: Is he still heartbroken over Leslie? Does he long for traditional values and abhor his own status as a man of "new money"? In any event, Jett is by far the most interesting character and one that is made out to be the bad guy for dubious reasons (perhaps it's because director George Stevens did not approve of Dean's mugging acting style).
The final hour is spent heavy-handedly condemning racism in the Deep South. Bick turns the corner when his son marries a Mexican woman and finds himself exchanging blows with a restaurateur in her honor. It's one of the stranger climaxes among Hollywood productions of this size and the switch from family chronicle to social indictment is too much of a narrative stretch for this overwrought soap opera.
Ben Davey
Music
Gate to Jazz
Beijing City Jazz Orchestra and French violinist Didier Lockwood opened the Second Beijing Nine Gates Jazz Festival on May 25 with their different approaches to jazz.
Beijing City Jazz Orchestra, made up of 17 Chinese and foreign musicians who live in Beijing, played mostly standards. Conducted by pianist Xia Jia, the band offered bright tones and light rhythms that made the audience swing.
In the second half of the concert, Lockwood (pictured) demonstrated his highly improvised music that incorporated different cultures, like the gypsy elements in Spain and Chinese flavor in Moon Reflected in the Erquan Spring.
Two Chinese musicians, erhu (two-stringed fiddle) player Ma Xianghua and saxophonist Jin Hao were special guests in Lockwood's band and contributed to the Chinese characteristic of his music. In the end, Lockwood came off the stage to play among the audience and even outside the concert hall.
Mu Qian
(China Daily 05/29/2007 page20)
