Written/Compiled and Reported by MOOK Scenic Spots Family Travel Life Net, Chen Guanxin
This year’s flagship “Grassland Concert” of the sixth-anniversary Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival has specially planned the choral program “Your T? Xing? Pang Yan? Cui Xiao Hao. Voices. 228 Grassland Concert,” featuring performances of classic pieces by both Chinese and foreign musicians along with a hundred-person choir, and inviting the audience on-site to join in singing the famous piece “Taiwan the Green” by local composer Tyzen Hsiao.
Free ticket applications for the “Grassland Concert” of the Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival open starting February 7. (Photo provided by Kaohsiung City Government Cultural Affairs Bureau)
This grassland concert, which aims to achieve a mass choir performance of ten thousand voices, will take place at 19:00 on February 22 on the lakeside grass slope of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, with free ticket applications open to the public starting February 7. To accomplish 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, so they can join in the celebration and passionately sing out our love and care for 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 be joined by four major choirs—the Kaohsiung Redwood Clogs Choir, Kaohsiung Medical University Choir, New Rhyme Choir, and Taiwan Melody Choir—totaling a hundred-member ensemble, plus special guest Italian trumpet virtuoso Andrea Zufferetti performing “Call to the Heroes,” “Church,” selections from Puccini including “None Shall Sleep,” as well as the stirring and emotional “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical Les Misérables. Also featured is the famous piece “If Tomorrow Comes the Next Life” by local composer Shih Ching-ju. With over 200 musicians from the orchestra and choirs performing together on stage, the scene will be spectacular and majestic—an absolutely rare experience.
The 2014 Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival Grassland Concert marks its sixth year, having accumulated 13 programs and 22 performances, with over 110,000 attendees having purchased tickets to watch. This year’s programs include the “Tim Burton Film Festival Symphony Grassland Concert” (March 1–2) and the “Harry Potter Hollywood Top 10 Fantasy Film Grassland Concert” (March 15–16), both of which are box office hits. In line with the original intention of creating the grassland brand to make concerts more accessible to citizens, the Cultural Affairs Bureau has added this free ticket “Your T? Xing? Pang Yan? Cui Xiao Hao. Voices. 228 Grassland Concert” this year to give back to the citizens and music fans for their support of the performing arts.
In addition to those holding tickets to any 2014 Spring Arts Festival performance, free tickets for “Your T? Xing? Pang Yan? Cui Xiao Hao. Voices. 228 Grassland Concert” can be collected from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM daily from February 7 to February 22 at the service desks of the Cultural Center Zhishan Hall, Dadong Arts and Cultural Center, Kaohsiung Museum of History, Music Museum, Pier-2 Art Center, as well as some libraries and MRT stations. The event is an outdoor concert where audiences will sit on the grass—no seats will be provided. Items such as scout chairs, folding tables, and stools are not allowed. For detailed ticket application and event information, please visit the official Spring Arts Festival website.
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