Bridget Veltri
arts@mustangdaily.net
East will meet West musically when the Cal Poly Symphony performs a concert featuring the music of China their performance, “Looking, East, Looking West” on Saturday night. The concert is part of “World Across the University: China in the 1930s and ’40s” sponsored by the Cal Poly music department.
“This is the first year we have had this event,” assistant music professor and event coordinator India D’Avignon said. “I was interested in the multi-disciplinary aspect and the international aspect.”
The concert will begin with European composers who were influenced by the sounds of the East: Borodin’s “Steppes of Central Asia,” Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite” and selections from Puccini’s last opera “Turandot.”
“It’s European music that is trying to evoke a sense of the East,” Cal Poly Symphony director David Arrivee said. He is most looking forward to the performance of “Turadot.”
“It’s so rare for us to be able to play music like that,” Arrivee said. Orchestras don’t perform operas; it’s not made for us and I found sections that could work for us, cut and pasted them and put them in a different order and in a way we made our own piece of selections from the opera.”
A group from the Shenyang Conservatory in China were originally scheduled to perform and showcase their afternoon instrument demonstration but was unable to leave China due to swine flu precautions.
The Los Angeles group “Pacific Trio” will be performing in their place. “This group is just as qualified,” D’Avignon said.
The Eastern-influenced evening will end when Tianshu Wang joins the Cal Poly Symphony in the “Yellow River Concerto,” which was written during the Cultural Revolution in China.
Wang is a graduate of the University of Arizona and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. “She has a high quality of training,” D’Avignon said.
The “Yellow River” piece is what inspired D’Avignon to chose the 1930s and 40s time period.
“That is when ‘Yellow River,’ was written,” D’Avignon said. “It was written as sort of a motivational piece to move the Chinese rise up against the Japanese; it was a way of mobilizing people through song.”
“World Across the University: China in the 1930s and 40s” will bring together Cal Poly faculty from various colleges that will discuss issues pertaining to China in their specific disciplines. Events during the day will include discussions about architecture, engineering, history, a demonstration of Chinese musical instruments and a film, “China: A Century of Revolution, Part 1.”
D’Avignon said that each year “World Across the University,” will focus on a new country and time period.” And China’s history is what makes this year’s event special.
“I think that it’s the huge history that it has, it’s completely different from western,” she said. “You can really have a better feel for a people and culture when you understand their music.
D’Avignon said that music is a great forum for diversity. “It starts to tear down borders and makes you realize how much we all have in common,” she said.
Arrivee agrees that this concert is a good demonstration of music’s universality. “The idea (is) how fluid the lines of influence are and that people in a country are constantly being influenced by other places,” he said.
The concert begins at 8 p.m. on Saturday in the Christopher Cohan Performing Arts Center. Tickets range between $10 and $12 for the public, $8 and $10 for seniors and $6 for students.
Tickets are on sale at the performing arts ticket office or by phone. Other “World Across the University” events are free and begin at 10:30 a.m.