About my final project

In the final project, I want to discuss several method I want to use to attract audience to embrace classical music. I would like to expound my ideal in following two steps:

1) In the first part, I will describe the embarrassing status of classical music in modern times. Our course named “the future of classical music”. That means classical music is facing terrible condition in our times. I will discuss what reason lead this condition. We can deal with this condition after we know the reason leading this condition.

2) In the second part, I will design two entry point learn from teaching artist program to help potential audiences to study musical knowledge. The first entry point I will focus on the mobile phone application program which is useful for adult who have spare time on public transport. The second entry point I will discuss the possibility of future plan. I mean we should provide basic music knowledge education when audiences are little boy/girl. I will discuss the research result from MIT group, whose result reveal the mechanism how our brain response to the music melody. This result is import for us to teach little boy/girl to study music knowledge effectively.

An influential conversation

Last Thursday I went to Harvard University for a activities "A conversation with Placido Domingo".

This is the first time I saw a famous tenor who is the best one of the three tenors of the world. He looks younger than his actual age. He is very gentleman, also very humor. He chatted a lot of his views of the vocal music and his experience in the conversation.

Some stories of his life his was chatted. They talked about his Opera and his opinions about music. One of the host asked him, some people say that music can change the world, what do you think? He said, I don't think so, if music can change the world, everyone just go to singing! The audience laughed loudly.
I think this is a good question for us. Does Music can change the world?

I think, although music can not change the world directly, but can change the mind of people. Music can make people's soul purification. Beautiful music can make people full of love, make people feel more happiness and positively. As we all know, people can change the world. If music can change people, why not music can does? In other words, music can influence the world indirectly.

It's difficult to imagine a world without Music. People no longer to sing and play  musical instrument, no longer creative music. Even no more melody in this world. We can not express our emotion through the music anymore. How boring the world will be?

Music can not only improve a person's heart gradually but also can arouse people's emotion. Good music can also be a good change for us. Music is one of the most amazing thing in this world. We should spread more beautiful music and love.

Music behind a mathematical constant

March 14 — 3/14, a date celebrated the world over as "Pi Day," after the irrational number. This year, to celebrate, musician Michael John Blake had the idea to compose, record and put on YouTube a musical interpretation of the most famous mathematical constant. He decided the song would be in C, then assigned each note a number: C=1, D=2 and so on up through 9. Using those assignments, he played the sequence of pi: 3.14159 through 31 decimal places. He assigned numbers to chords, too, but could only play the chords every other note and still make it sound vaguely musical. Finally, he used pi as the basis for the tempo — it's 157 beats per minute, which is half of 314. He played this part on several instruments, and layered them to make a song. The result isn't exactly catchy, but it's certainly melodic."It's random enough to where it's kind of odd, but then, because it's all based in the major scale, it musically works out to where it's sort of pleasing to the ear," Blake says. "For me, it has this great combination of pleasant but also slightly weird — kind of haunting."

I don’t know whether this melody can be assigned to classical music. But I think this is an interesting way to compose new music and an effective way to teach math. It is a good news for musicians and math teachers. Pi is the most recognized mathematical constant in the world. Scholars often consider Pi the most important and intriguing number in all of mathematics. The video posted by Michael on Yutube is very hot recently. This event tell us that music and math is linked in some way. We can express math using sounds. As a musician candidate, I think this is a wonderfully educational tool that is easily explained to young students of both math and music. PI, I'm sure, could also be incorporated into the rhythm pattern as well as inventing a completely new musical form to create a cohesive PI related musical and mathematical work. However, this is very aesthetically pleasing to the ear, and wonderfully visual at the same time. There is so many interesting mathematical constant in math, in future, you can compose a wonderful melody using anther constant.

At the end of this text, I give link about this popular music, if the reader is interested in the melody, you can listen online. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMq9he-5HUU

News from the Front

One of my friend is an organizer of an art organization that helping the children who have autism in China. This organization has been started since 2011, and everyone in this group is either the current students or the graduated students of Central Conservatory of Music. They are from different majors, share the different experiences and background of music. One thing, however, they have agreed and aimed for is to communicate and interact with the autism children by used music. 

I did not noticed this art organization when they were actually gave few concerts already at different places until someday my friend came to me and asked me if I could write a piece, which easily to engaged with children and those people who does not have the professional music background, which means instead of dissonant sounds, I need to write something purely melodic. I am stumped when I got start to work on it. Because all the time I have been working on the music that either for academic purpose or something related to academically, but ultimately, I finished the piece and went to the concert few weeks later. I have to say that I was influenced by this concert more than I expected. 

In most cases people go to concerts and touched by music works or the performers, but in this time, I was deeply touched by the audiences who attended to this concert. These audiences, these children and their parents, they might do not even know who is Mozart or who wrote the fifth symphony. They was so engaged with the music, which just wrote by the college students, like me. I mean I could not did the better job than Beethoven, but those children’s faces told me that they liked the every single notes of these pieces. As a composer, of course I wish the audiences could like my music, but I also knew that I just could not matched all types of tastes. That is why I was pretty depressed for a long time just because I could not figured out what is the meaning for me to compose a piece. I mean at school, I got teachers and many due days to pushed me move forward, but what about after I graduate. I need to find a powerful point that could continue support me to stick with my music career. 

This art organization that my friend launched is connected by the people who like music and they want to help people with music, no matter whether they have the professional background. Sometimes when we are working on one thing for a really long time, we start to forgot the reason why we start it at the first time and where would this thing bring us to. The classical music might started since Bach or even earlier, and now we are in some kind of “Contemporary classical music” period, and who knows what is the next period of music will come? In fact, I do not think music could just simply be divided by style or time period, do not even mention dissonant and consonant. Music is a diversification substance, which needed by diversity of audiences. I wrote music because I think music is a state of lifestyle, the one could influence people’s life in many ways. So this concert actually gave me a reason to keep my music going, also rebuilt up my hopes to music or more specifically, to my own music career. I think the future of classical music would be flourish in more diversity ways than present, and as a musician, I will not stopping to learn from it. 

Cantata Profana: Minding the Gap

Cantata Profrana is a New York/New Haven based ensemble founded in 2012 by by violinist Jacob Ashworth and bass-baritone John Taylor Ward during their studies at Yale. The ensemble seeks to present thoughtful reimaginations of a variety of repertoire for new audiences. Equally at home in early music, standard classical repertoire, and newly composed works, it is not uncommon to see a Cantata Profana concert programming Caccini and Monteverdi alongside alongside works by such composers as Webern. With a dramatically gifted ensemble of singers and instrumentalists, the Cantata Profana’s productions are always colorful and engaging.

I find this ensemble to be groundbreaking in several ways. The most obvious to me is their commitment to programming old and new music, rather than specializing as an early music group or a new music group, something that I feel is pretty standard in the US. What is particularly interesting about their broad repertoire isn’t just that Cantata Profana performs both early and new music, but that they will often combine works from these arenas in the same concert. For example, a recent project by Cantata Profana paired Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor with Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. While these two operas hold much in similar (both tell the stories of two tragic women scorned by love and ending their own lives), one would not expect to see a 19th century bel canto masterpiece and a 17th century English opera performed back to back. Another great example of their innovative programming ideas involves a recital of Purcell, Ives, Sondheim, and Taylor Swift. This is even more outside the box than pairing Lucia and Dido, which at least come out of the same tradition of western art music. This song recital crosses genre lines that we consider to be irreconcilable much of the time.

All of this important to the future of classical music because it makes classical music accessible to audiences in a very real way. Presenting Lucia and Dido in the same program brings opera goers interested in two different areas of music together, and introduces them to a wider variety of style and genre within the arena of opera. Cantata Profrana’s song recital combining Purcell, Ives, Sondheim, and Taylor swift allows new audiences to see that classical music does not have to be an inaccessible, hoity-toity artform that turns its nose up to musical theater and pop music. And it tells classical music lovers that it’s ok to listen to enjoy the music of Purcell as well as the music of Taylor Swift. Cantata Profana breaks down the walls that divide pop music and classical music culture, and creates an environment where music (not classical music and pop music, but music) is for everyone. Even a recent concert of Handel arias turned into a drag show demonstrates that all music can be festive and fun. Cantata Profana actively shows that classical music need not be limited to a formal concert hall and pop music limited to lowbrow venues.

http://www.cantataprofana.com/#!archives/c1y85

Composing Advocacy: Social Voices

This article highlighted the idea that composers can and should "tell historical and social narratives" with their music. The author touches on the ongoing war with terrorism, and the opera The Canticle of the Black Madonna which Ethan Ganse Morse wrote about a soldier struggling with PTSD. It goes on to talk about Joan Szymko's work Shadow and Light, a choral work telling the stories of Alzheimer's patients. The article goes on to discuss different outreach programs that are happening with ensembles in America today and the power that music has to "heal." I think this article made a lot of important points, music traditionally has a way of connecting people from all walks of life and if more pieces started to focus on specific stories and events I think that music would stand out in history and help tell our communal stories to our future listeners.

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/composing-advocacy-social-voices/

The collaborative piano music festival

  Nowadays people pay more attention on collaborative piano, not only piano solo.
I think collaborative piano it's really important. Because they need to play with other people. Since like very easy but there has a lot of things need to learn. And there has a lot of music right festival or compition around the word. But I don't think there has too many only for collaborative piano one. In past year, there has a collaborative piano music festival in Beijing. The very first collaborative piano festival. This it's really good news. People let collaborative piano become famous.

  During the festival there has competition and master class. In the past time some time the concert they can free to go but in this festival they need ticket. and the student who attend and sign up for this festival they can play with strings, clarinet etc. This is really good things for Chinese student because in nowadays in Conservtory there has not very clear one. Some people they call accpomny but thought this music festival they made people know this it's not "accompany", they have a name is collaborative piano.