27 Friday Sep 2013
Gabriela Ortiz, the Frida Kahlo of Mexican music.
Receiving the news that Southwest’s performance of Gabriela’s Elegía is nominated for Best Classical Contemporary Composition by Latin Grammy in Hà Nội is a yin yang marriage of two loves of mine, México and Việt Nam. This news is also an unexpected and brilliant way to overcome jet lag!
Talk about juxtaposition. Here is the balcony view from my Old Quarter coffee shop on Mã Mây St. where I am writing this entry about Gabriela Ortiz:
26 Thursday Sep 2013
“In Việt Nam, time is elastic.”
We’ve arrived smoothly dodging the super typhoon that missed Hong Kong, we’re very thankful and happy to be in the Old Quarter of Hà Nội.
Nguyễn Thanh Thưy, the first of many new friends I’m going to meet here in Hà Nội and who you see in the above photo, joins Jan, me and composer Vũ Nhật Tân for lunch yesterday at Ngôn in the French Quarter of Hà Nội. She shared a riveting memory of her first trip to the West, which was to Zürich in Switzerland.
She became very nervous and confused when confronted for the first time with a Swiss timetable to use mass transit. “Are these people insane? Nothing needs to be this precise! And people stared at their watches, annoyed if the bus arrived late!” I think the Vietnamese version of “Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore” started in her homesick young mind.
22 Sunday Sep 2013
A silk fabric shop in Hà Nội.
One city casts a spell of identity crisis shared throughout Asia, a complicated emulsion of external anguish married to secret admiration. In visiting Asia over the last decade, to fall in love with Việt Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Japan or the French Concession in Shanghai, I’ve had to acknowledge the ghosts of Paris and France. Over time, my intuition, married to serious study, helped me piece together the terrible results of extractive colonialism juxtaposed with the persistent Asian fascination for, in most cases, a former brutal oppressor. In order to begin a new chapter making “something wonderful happen,” as I had promised Loi Trinh Le, I knew a great deal of effort would be needed to make sense of the cultural possibilities of the 21st century. But things could not get worse than the horrors of the 20th century wars.
20 Friday Sep 2013
Tags
Asia, Boston Opera Company, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston University, Japan, Sarah Caldwell, Seiji Ozawa, Tanglewood
Young maple leaves at Ei-Kando Temple in Kyoto, May 2013.
Here’s a thought experiment. Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten and John Cage are stuck in a Tokyo elevator for over three hours. While waiting for a repairman, what do they talk about to pass the time? Send me your ideas!
As I mentioned in my last post, our first visit to Asia was to Japan in 2002 and started in Kyoto. A celebration of our 20th wedding anniversary, Jan and I decided to visit her college friend and enthusiastic chamber music collaborator from Boston University days, Mitsuyo Matsumoto. We were transformed and overwhelmed with the beauty of cherry blossoms, sakura, as Miko guided us around the temples of Kyoto.
Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt | Filed under Composers, Contemporary Music, Education, Food, LA International New Music Festival, Music, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Uncategorized, Vietnam
19 Thursday Sep 2013
A lotus pond in Hội An.
Loi Trinh Le.
As I dream of Việt Nam in anticipation of my return, I dream also of the love that turned me towards the East. As with most love stories, people get involved and shape the narrative. My compass, my guide, my mentor and inspiration in this love was Loi Trinh Le.
We called her Trinh. A diminutive but imposing woman, she was a highly gifted acupuncturist with numerous celebrity patients thrown in for good measure. But everyone had to find her modest house in Culver City for treatments. Trinh navigated me through life’s challenges, imposing Buddhist tough love when necessary and then countering with a warmth of abounding compassion.
Sound Travels with Jeff von der Schmidt 