Last night I attended the opening performance in The Toby. It was a memorable experience! The artistry of the musicians – Cho-Liang Lin, Susie Park, Sophie Shao, Atar Arad, and Min Xiao-Fen – was impressive.  More than impressive. It was moving. The passion and joy that each artist conveyed to the audience made the performance a gift. During the first half of the evening, four of the five demonstrated their love for the classical traditions of both China and the West. During the second half, all five performed composer Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera, a visual and sonic work that calls on the musicians to perform ritual-like actions involving water, paper, stones and to use their voices to make sounds not usually heard in a concert hall.

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From mad reality comes the sanity of art.  “My whole village was crazy,” writes composer Tan Dun.  “We had a professional crying team available for hire at funerals and deaths…a shamanistic choir to set the mournful tone.”  In Chinese folk culture, “ghosting” is a verb: an active conversation with the spirits of the past and the hereafter.

In Tan’s composition “Ghost Opera”, part of the first concert presented in the IMA’s newly renovated Tobias Theater this Friday, gongs talk to splashing water (yes, water); stones talk to cymbals, and the breath of a monk talks to a Chinese lute (a pipa).  It’s going to be a visually stunning, dramatically lit piece in which the musicians won’t be sitting still.

Photo courtesy of Nana Watanabe

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