Tan moves up a gear to play heavy metal and spinning wheels

By Chen Jie (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-09 16:06

Composer Tan Dun turns to the not-so-romantic world of car parts for his innovative music. File photo

Love it or hate it, Tan Dun's music has always attracted attention.

The conceptual and multifaceted composer-conductor incorporates sounds and instruments from the natural world, including water, wind, ceramics and paper, to create a new way of defining and experiencing music. These ideas stem from the notion that material objects have spirits living in them, a concept ever-present in the old village where Tan grew up, in Hunan province.

Now he has found a new source of inspiration in industrial workshops, playing car parts.

Commissioned to be the artistic director of Audi Summer Music Week, Tan has created a new piece, Overture 2008, featuring percussion instruments from car parts like the metal wheels. The intriguing new work will be premiered in Beijing, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, from Sept 10 to 17.

Just as his composition Gold Rings, Jade Echoes, which was played at every awards ceremony at the Olympics, used the sound of 2,000-year-old bronze bells, Overture 2008 blends sounds of the car's metal components with the ancient bronze chimes, transforming them into a riveting music experience.

"I have always been interested in the sounds of the natural world and all kinds of objects," Tan says. "I have played with water, paper and ceramics and now I have fallen in love with metal and steel.

"After Audi invited me to do Summer Music Week, I visited their workshops, listened to the sounds they produce while working and wrote the music about their work."

Apart from Overture 2008, Summer Music Week also presents Secret Land for Orchestra and Twelve Violoncelli, commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle that premiered in Berlin in 2004, and Orchestral Theater IV: The Gate (1999).

"Orchestral Theater" was a concept that Tan devised as a modern symphony, combining an ancient ritualistic format with symphonic traditions. In the Orchestra Theater series, he developed the links between multimedia and multiculturalism.

In Orchestral Theater IV: The Gate, distinct musical and cultural traditions are integrated with a female Peking opera singer, a Western operatic soprano and a Japanese puppeteer. Live video images abstracted from the stage action are also shown during the performance.

"I try to display an evolution in the orchestral experience by establishing new links between the audience, performers, video and conductor, thereby intensifying the live experience and creating new, non-traditional roles for the orchestra and everyone involved," says Tan.

Secret Land for Orchestra and Twelve Violoncelli, which is also named Four Secret Roads of Marco Polo is about the many secrets that exist between cultures and their relationships.

"I see the Silk Road that Marco Polo traveled along to China as very open and inspirational, just like a caterpillar spinning its cocoon - no matter how long you pull the silk, the thread never breaks," he says.

"Secondly, as a composer, I always retreat to my own secret land, that inner creative source that I revisit from time to time, from piece to piece. There are always different technical and spiritual inventions in my secret land."

This haunting music will be played during Audi Summer Music Week by a new youth orchestra, made up of students from China's leading music schools. The creation of the orchestra is the other major goal that the Music Week aims to achieve.

"We consider it a long-term project to develop young musicians," he continues.

"The development of music depends on contributions of musicians generation by generation. From my own experience, young people need opportunities, supports and mentors. We will organize this youth orchestra and hope to make it a platform for them to realize their dreams."

Tan says Audi Summer Music Week will naturally source most of the orchestra from the Youth Orchestra of China Central Conservatory of Music. Thereafter, auditions will be held around the world and the world's finest conductors will be invited to appear as guests and give master classes.

"I am excited to accept Audi's commission because I am willing to work with young and dynamic people so we can make innovative music together," Tan says.

"My ambition is to make it one of the best youth orchestras in the world in three years - and make the musicians as much heroes among China's youth as pop stars."

(China Daily 09/09/2008 page19)