[Thursday Arts & Culture] Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival’s Mass Choir Grassland Concert – Free Ticket Application

Written/Compiled & Reported by MOOK Traveler Life Net’s Chen Guanxin

 

The flagship “Grassland Concert” of the sixth-anniversary Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival has specially planned the choral program “Your Trumpet, My Voice, and the 228 Grassland Concert” this year, featuring performances of classic pieces by both local and international musicians and a hundred-person choir, and inviting the audience to join in singing the famous piece “Taiwan the Green” by native composer Tyzen Hsiao.

This grassland concert, which aims to achieve a mass choir of ten thousand, will be held on February 22 at 19:00 on the lakeside grass slope of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, with free ticket applications opening to the public from February 7. To realize this feat, the Kaohsiung Symphony Orchestra has specially recorded the choral piece “Taiwan the Green” from Tyzen Hsiao’s “Overture 1947.” This is the only publicly available recording of the piece in the world, and it is available for download on the Spring Arts Festival website. The organizers invite interested audiences and music fans to listen and practice in advance, and then come together on the day to sing out our love and care for the land of Taiwan.

 

Beyond the mass chorus of “Taiwan the Green,” the scale of this grassland concert is also unprecedentedly grand. Led by renowned Kaohsiung pianist Liu Fumei, soprano Huang Xuanwen, and conductor Yang Zhiqin, the Kaohsiung Symphony Orchestra will perform alongside four major choirs—Kaohsiung Redwood Clogs Choir, Kaohsiung Medical University Choir, New Harmony Choir, and Taiwan Melody Choir—with a combined hundred-member choir. The event will also feature special guest Italian trumpeter Andrea Giuffredi performing “The Call of the Heroes,” “The Church,” excerpts from Puccini including “None Shall Sleep,” as well as the rousing and moving “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical Les Misérables. Also included is the famous piece “If Tomorrow Comes” by local composer Shih Ching-Ju. With over 200 musicians from the orchestra and choirs performing together on stage, the spectacular and majestic scene will be truly rare.

 

The 2014 Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival Grassland Concert marks its sixth year, having accumulated 13 programs and 22 performances, with a total of over 110,000 attendees having purchased tickets to watch. This year’s programs include “Tim Burton Film Festival Symphonic Grassland Concert” (March 1–2) and “Harry Potter: Top 10 Hollywood Fantasy Films Grassland Concert” (March 15–16), both of which are box office hits. True to the original intention of creating the grassland brand, the Cultural Affairs Bureau aims to make concerts more accessible to citizens, and this year adds this free-ticket “Your Trumpet, My Voice, and the 228 Grassland Concert” to give back to the support shown by citizens and music fans for the performing arts.

 

In addition to those holding tickets to any 2014 Spring Arts Festival performance, free tickets for “Your Trumpet, My Voice, and the 228 Grassland Concert” can be applied for from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM between February 7 and February 22 at the service desks of the Cultural Center’s Jhihshan Hall, the Dadong Cultural and Arts Center, the Kaohsiung Museum of History, the Music Museum, the Pier-2 Art Center, as well as some libraries and MRT stations. As an outdoor concert, the event will be performed on the grass with attendees sitting on the ground—no seats will be provided. Please do not bring items such as scout chairs, foldable tables, or stools. For detailed ticket application and event information, please check the Spring Arts Festival official website.

 

 

●  Further Reading:

[Thursday Arts & Culture] 2013 FORMOSA Sculpture Biennale Opens at Kaohsiung’s Pier-2

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