Erhu and Violin :

The Butterfly Lovers Concert

University of Delaware, Mitchell Hall

Friday, Nov. 12 , 8pm, 

Saturday, Nov 13, 8pm

 

Performing Artists :  

             Xiang Gao (Violin, artistic director)

             Cathy Y. Yang (Erhu, guest artist)

             Rita Sloan  (Pianist)

             Danny Peak ( Playwright)

             Stephanie Shade  (Actress)

Ticket information

             $25  Adults,  $20 Seniors. UD faculty, staff and alumni,  $10  students

To order tickets, call (302) 831-2204 or stop by the REP box office in the Roselle Center for the Arts between noon to 5 pm  Monday through Friday.  For more information about MPCS visit website: mpcs.music.udel.edu.

Tickets (if available) will be sold at the door of Mitchell Hall on the days of concerts at 7-7:45 pm.

Parking

General Public parking is recommended in the Center for the Arts Parking Garage between Elkton Road and Amstal Avenue in Newark, Delaware

 

With the sponsorship from Hanlin Chinese Culture Association, this multimedia and multicultural concert features MPCS artistic director Xiang Gao and UD Institute for Global Studies (IGS) Distinguished Guest Artist, international Erhu (two stringed Chinese violin) virtuoso Cathy Y. Yang. Accompanied by the internationally acclaimed collaborative pianist Rita Sloan, the western and eastern violinists will perform as a newly formed duet named “6ixwire” to celebrate IGS’s International Education Week. Their fiery techniques and daring passion promise to impress audiences. Ms. Yang’s MPCS debut in last year’s iMusic 3 —Ode to Earth was so successful that she is returning at the request of MPCS audience members.

 

Actors Danny Peak and Stephanie Shade, visual artist Vincent D’Amico and other guest artists join the master musicians in a performance of the Butterfly Lovers Multimedia Violin Concerto. The Chinese story of the Butterfly Lovers, Liang and Zhu, is as powerful as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but 1,000 years older. This new production created by Xiang Gao, which includes a dramatic reading by playwright Danny Peak draws its significance from Chinese history, culture, humor and tragic drama. Its charm will take your breath away!

 

The music, Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, was composed by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao of China in 1958. It represents a mandate from the Maoist era to explore the feasibility of setting Chinese music in a Western symphonic medium, incorporating borrowed devices from Chinese folk theatrical music, as well as vocal techniques of the Chinese Yue Opera. The end result is an extremely successful free-form programmatic concerto for violin and orchestra and it remains the most successful of all Chinese violin concertos. This presentation of the concerto for violin, erhu (two-string Chinese violin), two narrators, piano and visual elements was re-arranged by Xiang Gao for 6ixwire, a cross-over duet Mr. Gao formed with erhu soloist Cathy Y. Yang.

 

About the Artists

 

Recognized as one of the world’s most successful performing artists of his generation from the People’s Republic of China, Xiang Gao is cited by the New York Times as “a rare and soulful virtuoso.” He has performed for many world leaders. Most recently, Mr. Gao was a featured soloist to perform for the Chinese President Hu JinTao and the visiting King Carlos I of Spain. His musical integrity and virtuoso technique have gained accolades from audiences and reviewers around the world.  Mr. Gao is the youngest professor of music at the University of Delaware. In 2007, the Stradivari Society in Chicago selected Mr. Gao to be a recipient of world famous Stradivarius violins for his international solo concerts.  Mr. Gao is the founding director of China Music Foundation, China Virtuosi chamber ensemble and the University of Delaware’s Master Players Concert Series.

 

Highlights of the recent season’s engage­ments include the North American premier of Eduard Tubin’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Detroit Symphony; the U.S. pre­mier performance of Eino Tamberg’s violin concerto with the Absolute Ensemble in Merkin Hall, New York City; solo performances with the Czech Philharmonic, the Gothenburg Symphony-National Orchestra of Sweden, the St. Petersburg Philhar­monic of Russia, the Estonia National Symphony, the Mexico State Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Memphis Symphony, the Alabama Symphony, Aspen Music Festival orchestras and the Knoxville Symphony among others. Among the world’s major concert halls and festivals at which Mr. Gao frequently appears are Carnegie Hall, the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki, the Aspen Music tent, the Smetana Hall, the “Prague Spring” International Music Festival, the Singapore International Music Festival, the David Oistrakh International Music Festival, the Spoleto Music Festival, the Tallinn International Festival, the Interlochen Festival and the Meadow Brook Music Festival.

 

 

One of the founding members of 6ixWire (a cross-over duet), the internationally ac­claimed erhu soloist Cathy Y. Yang was born into a well-known musician family in Bei­jing. She began her musical studies on erhu (known as the Chinese violin), guzheng (Chi­nese zither) and piano at age five, and soon began performing in public.   After graduated from Chinese Central Conservatory in 1999,  Ms. Yang has hold  concertmaster position at Chinese Central Conservatory Orchestra and associate concertmaster of the Chinese Central Traditional Instruments Orachestra.  She also  performed as Erhu Soloist  and touring extensively throughout Asia, Europe, and North America; awarded fellowship in Japanese, become a professor the China Contemporary Cultural Academy;  has numerous appearances in Chinese TV. In 2007, the Chinese National Government chose Ms. Yang to be a cultural ambassador to give concerts in Vienna, Frankfurt and Munich. 

 

Russian-born pianist Rita Sloan began piano studies shortly after her Polish family immigrated to the United States. As the winner of various scholarships and prizes, she attended The Juilliard School studying with Martin Ca­nin and Rosina Lhevinne. At Juilliard, she won the Concerto Competition and was awarded the Pro-Mozart Prize to study at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She has also studied with Leon Fleisher, Aube Tzerko and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

 

As a soloist, Rita Sloan has performed in recital and with orchestra throughout the United States and Europe. As a chamber musician and collaborative artist, she performs interna­tionally with many of today’s outstanding instrumentalists. Appearances performing chamber music include the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Chamber Music Series, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Chamber Music Series, New York’s Bargemusic and the Aspen Music Festival, where Ms. Sloan is a member of the artist piano faculty. She is also the founder and coordinator of the col­laborative artist and piano chamber music programs at the Aspen Festival. This year marks the second time Ms. Sloan has been awarded Aspen’s New Horizons Fellow­ship, the festival’s most prestigious teaching award. She is also a founding member of the Aspen Ensemble, a unique chamber music group comprising piano, flute, violin, viola and cello which performs internationally and has been featured on NPR.

 

Ms. Sloan has been a frequent visitor to Japan, Taiwan and Korea, where she has performed and given master classes. A performing member of the piano faculty of the University of Maryland School of Music since 1999, Rita Sloan also directs the col­laborative artist program.

 

In 2003, Danny Peak (playwright, actor) collaborated with international violinist Xiang Gao to write the narration for The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto and has since ap­peared as the male narrator in performances at venues including the Detroit Symphony, Southern Illinois University and the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware. Besides his work as a playwright and actor, he has directed off-Broadway and at many regional theatres around the country including the Melting Pot Theatre and the Actor’s Studio in New York, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Worcester Foothills Theatre Company, Mount Holyoke Summer Theatre in Massachusetts, Summer Theatre By The Grove, Allegheny Highlands Regional Theatre, Boalbarn Playhouse in Pennsylvania, and Playwrights’ American Conservatory Theatre in Oregon. He also toured three summers to Russia to direct original productions with a multinational cast. From 1985 to 1994, he served as assistant artistic director at the Delaware Theatre Company. Currently, Danny is artistic director of Distant Voices Touring Theatre, for whom he has written and directed Distant Voices, a performance piece chronicling the story of the Japanese-American internment of World War II and September Echoes, another performance piece that examines the events following the September 11 attacks. DVTT has toured nationally to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in South Carolina; Wellesley College in Massachusetts; and internationally at the Watford Artslink Festival just outside London, England. Danny and his wife, pianist Julie Nishimura, are most proud of their current project: nine-year old Miranda.

 

Originally from West Virginia, Stephanie Shade has worked as an actor, singer and teacher in the Philadelphia/Wilmington/Bal­timore area since 1996. In 2007, Ms. Shade received her MFA in Theater from Towson University, where she performed her one-woman clown show: Chatter vs. Ladder (…in a pitter-patter matter…). She is a founding member of 9 Imaginary Cows Theater Collec­tive in Baltimore.

 

In addition to The Butterfly Lovers Con­certo, Ms. Shade has performed with other music-dramatic reading projects: Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) with the Delaware Symphony and Distant Voices and September Echoes with Distant Voices Touring Theatre. Other performance credits include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hel­ena—Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival), It’s All True (InterAct Theater), Bed and Sofa (Wilma Theatre); and with City Theater Company in Wilmington, Delaware—Into the Woods (Cinderella), Merrily We Roll Along (Mary), The Vagina Monologues (Director/Reader), Dirigible (Laura), Angels in America Part I: Millennium Approaches (Harper), The Food Chain (Amanda) and multiple roles in The Delaware 10-Minute Play Festival (1999-2004).

 

As a classical singer, she performed with Opera Memphis (Frasquita, Carmen), Opera Festival of New Jersey and OperaDelaware. From 2000-2004, Ms. Shade worked as a theater teaching artist for MBNA Academy, Latin American Community Center, Grand Opera House Arts Education, Delaware Wolf Trap and the Delaware Institute for Arts in Education. Ms. Shade has also been a voice teacher since 1997, most recently on the faculty of the Grand School of Music in Wilmington, Delaware. Ms. Shade is currently raising two sons with her writer-director husband, Tom Shade.

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