Symposium: New Frontiers in Music 1

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

PMP hosted a full-day symposium at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia to address significant streams of innovation within the current professional music field. The symposium consisted of two panel discussions, Interdisciplinary Art: New Directions, and Chinese Currents in Contemporary Music, with a break for a catered lunch. The symposium was attended by approximately sixty individuals, including a class of composition students from the University of the Arts. Both discussions were moderated by Frank J. Oteri, composer and Editor of the American Music Center’s web magazine NewMusicBox, and were accompanied by audio-visual samples of the panelists’ work.

The morning panel presented nationally prominent panelists with wide-ranging expertise in interdisciplinary art, encompassing composition, direction, production, and management: David Lang, composer and Co-artistic Director of Bang on a Can; Miya Masaoka, composer, koto player, and performance artist; Bob McGrath, Director, Ridge Theater; Joe Melillo, Executive Producer, Brooklyn Academy of Music; and Alisa Regas, Associate Director, Pomegranate Arts. A number of the panelists described their drive to pursue the kind of work that interested them, despite critical and financial risks often posed by large-scale interdisciplinary projects. Mr. Lang spoke specifically about problem-solving as a prominent aspect of such collaborative work.

The afternoon panel included Jon Jang, composer, pianist, and Artistic Director of the Pan Asian Arkestra; Zhou Long, composer and Music Director of Music from China; Ken Smith, music journalist for Gramophone and the Financial Times; and Min Xiaofen, pipa player and vocalist, as well as a Sony, Verve, and Avant recording artist. This discussion explored the influence that Chinese and Chinese-American composers have had on Western composition, as well as how the panelists themselves had found unique blends and marriages of Eastern and Western soundscapes. Mr. Jang spoke about how the history of Asians in San Francisco came to shape projects of his, and Ms. Xiaofen gave a striking, impromptu vocal performance of a song she’d woven together from a Chinese folk song and a jazz standard.