Third Angle New Music: The Goddess
$30 ($25 ages 65 & over/ages 29 & under, $15 student w/ID, $5 Arts-for-All)
- Min Xiao-Fen, pipa
- Rez Abbasi, guitar
Internationally renowned composer and pipa player Min Xiao-Fen returns to Portland with guitarist Rez Abbasi, performing the NW premiere of her reimagined score to The Goddess, a 1930s Chinese silent film about a streetwalker fighting amid social injustice to give her young son an education and a better life.
About Min Xiao-Fen, pipa
One of the key instruments in Chinese music, the pipa has a rich and storied legacy stretching back nearly two thousand years. Few artists have done more to both honor and reinvent that history than renowned pipa soloist, vocalist and composer Min Xiao-Fen. Classically trained in her native China, Ms. Min was an acclaimed traditional music soloist before relocating to the United States and forging a new path for her instrument alongside many of the leading lights in modern jazz, free improvisation, experimental, and contemporary classical music.
In Ms. Min's music, east and west, tradition and innovation, discipline and spontaneity, ancient past and unexplored future all flow together like streams joining in one vibrant river. NPR Weekend Edition lauded Ms. Min as "one of the world's greatest virtuosos" and JazzTimes hailed her as "a pioneer in integrating her ancient instrument with modern jazz and improvised music." The New York Times raved that her singular work "has traversed a sweeping musical odyssey." Min's expressive, uncategorizable voice has found her collaborating with such inventive luminaries as Wadada Leo Smith, Derek Bailey, Randy Weston, John Zorn, Christian Marclay and Björk.
http://minbluepipa.com/