Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

The international collaboration of the Forum Music and Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon started with Légendes ! Three experienced composers from Taiwan and France were commissioned to create the music for the show. From the different cultural backgrounds represented by the percussion ensembles, the two sides jointly created and performed a new bidirectional cultural interpretation. The piece by Taiwanese composer Yang, Tsung-Hsien, Meditation on an Imaginary Ceremonial, integrates traditional and contemporary vocabularies, expressing the ceremonial scene and spiritual pursuit jointly possessed by human cultures. The symphonic element of the piece that incorporates the maturity and sound quality of percussion instruments makes it one of Taiwan’s best percussion music in recent years.   Committee member:Yang, Chien-Chang

Artwork Introduction

''Légendes!'' is an international collaboration between Forum Music Percussion Ensembles and Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon. The two groups not only performed the most representative works from their repertoires, but also joined forces in performance, interpreting from the standpoint of the composers’ dual perspectives on modern culture. Despite the disparate styles of cultural expression in Taiwan and France, the two groups share a common passion for contemporary music. The result is a Taiwanese-French musical dialogue in which “similarity is sought within difference, and difference within similarity.”

The concert includes four individual works, three of which are new works being performed for the first time: “L’Arbre aux fleurs” for five keyboard percussionists, the socio-anthropological vision-filled “Meditation on an Imaginary Ceremonial” and “Parzi-fal,” for which Forum　Music Percussion Ensembles and Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon split into two groups consisting of five players. Three leading composers were commissioned: Taiwan’s Yang, Tsung-hsien, and French composers François Narboni and Thierry Pécou. Working together with Forum Music Percussion Ensembles and Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon, they sought to enable audiences to take a journey down the rivers of history, with the aesthetics of the island of Taiwan on one side and of classical Europe on the other. Through the powerful tension created by rich musical expression and pronounced contrast, audiences are treated to a profound cultural voyage.

About the Artist

Forum Music was founded in 1996 by renowned percussionist Hu, Bor-Nien with the aim of promoting the fine arts and contemporary music. In 1983, five students from Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris founded Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon, proposing a new and innovative type of music.