Carleton music faculty members Gao Hong (Chinese pipa), and Nicola Melville (piano), along with St. Olaf College music faculty, Dave Hagedorn (percussion) and Jun Qian (clarinet), will perform together on Saturday, March 7 at 1 p.m at the MacPhail Center for Music’s Antonello Hall, 501 South 2nd St., in downtown Minneapolis. The program will include traditional Chinese works, traditional Western works, compositions by Gao Hong, and world premiere performances of new compositions by Northfield composers Justin Merritt (St. Olaf College) and Alex Freeman (Carleton College), and New York composer Doug Opel. This concert is free and open to the public.
Representing three countries—Gao Hong, Melville, Hagedorn, and Qian come together in an exciting new Asian-fusion classical ensemble they call "Intersections." This unique musical collaboration brings a wealth of diverse experiences to the thrilling ensemble. Their broad backgrounds in Western Art music, traditional Chinese music, East-meets-West compositions, contemporary music, jazz and ragtime fuse to produce vibrant and varied programming that is fresh and innovative.
Gao Hong, a Chinese musical prodigy and master of the pear-shaped lute, the pipa, began her career as a professional musician at age 12. She graduated with honors from China's premier music school, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she studied with the great pipa master Lin Shicheng. In both China and the U.S., Gao Hong has received numerous top awards and honors, including First Prize in the Hebei Professional Young Music Performers Competition and an International Art Cup in Beijing. In 2005 Gao Hong became the first traditional musician to be awarded the prestigious Bush Artist Fellowship, and in 2008 she became the only musician in any genre to win three McKnight Artist Fellowships for Performing Musicians. The Minnesota State Arts Board has awarded her with an Artist Assistance Fellowship, an Artist Initiative Grant, and a Cultural Community Partnership grant. She has also received a LIN (Leadership Initiatives in Neighborhoods) Grant from the St. Paul Companies; three Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grants; an Asian Pacific Award; and an Encore award, a Subito award, and two Performance Incentive Funds from the American Composers Forum.
Gao Hong has performed throughout Europe, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and the U.S. in solo concerts and with symphony orchestras, jazz musicians, and musicians from other cultures. She has performed at many major festivals worldwide. Her performances have included those at the Lincoln Center Festival; Carnegie Hall; the San Francisco Jazz Festival; the Smithsonian Institution; the Next Wave Festival; Festival d'Automne a Paris in Paris and Caen, France; the International Festival of Perth, Australia; and the Festival de Teatro d'Europa in Milan, Italy. Her performances of pipa concerti with symphony orchestras include several world, U.S., and regional premieres and performances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony, Heidelberg (Germany) Philharmonic, the Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco, the Portland (Maine) Symphony, and the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra among others. In addition, she performed with the Lincoln Center production of “The Peony Pavilion.”
As a composer, she has received commissions from the American Composers Forum, Walker Art Center, the Jerome Foundation, Zeitgeist, Ragamala Music and Dance Theater, Theater Mu, IFTPA, Danish guitarist Lars Hannibal, and Twin Cities Public Television for the six-part series "Made in China." Meet the Composer Inc. in New York City has awarded her two Creative Connections grants and two MetLife Creative Connections grants.
In addition to Gao Hong’s own solo performances of her compositions worldwide, her music has been performed internationally by many world class musicians. In 2000, Song of the Pipa, a play based on Gao Hong’s life and the life of Chinese poet, Bai Juyi, received 20 performances by Theater Mu and featured live musical accompaniment and new compositions by Gao Hong. In 2007 her first choral composition - “The Coming of Spring” - was one of five pieces selected out of 128 applicants nationwide for a reading session by VocalEssence. The piece was premiered by VocalEssence at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul in 2008. "Awakening" - her newly commissioned piece from the Jerome Foundation - was premiered by Gao Hong and Speaking in Tongues at Muziekgebouw aan het IJ in Amsterdam in March, 2007. In the same year she was also selected to participate in a composer’s workshop hosted by the new music ensemble, Zeitgeist, and premiered her new composition “Courage” - for pipa and percussion - with Present Music in Milwaukee. In 2008, to celebrate Gao Hong's 35th anniversary of playing her pipa and 10 years as a composer, Hong headlined two major concerts featuring her compositions at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Ted Mann Hall in Minneapolis. She composed a special pipa and sitar duet with guest artists Shubhendra Rao on sitar- a top disciple of Ravi Shankar - and rising young tabla star Biplab Bhattacharya. Three of her works received their world premieres and were performed by taiko drum master Kenny Endo, David Hagedorn on percussion, cellist Michelle Kinney, Gao Hong on pipa, and Indian vocalist and veena player Nirmala Rajasekar.
Since her arrival in U.S. in 1994, Gao Hong has been featured in over 100 newspaper and magazine articles and four television documentaries. She has presented hundreds of educational workshops for elementary through college-age students, and has been on the faculty of Metropolitan State University and MacPhail Center for the Arts. She is currently a member of the music faculty at Carleton College where she teaches Chinese instruments. She is also a Guest Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and is a roster artist with the Minnesota State Arts Board and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's CONNECT Program.
China's foremost music publication, People's Music, wrote of Gao Hong that "like the famous Luoyang peony, she has gradually emerged as the best of all beautiful flowers...her performance has extremely strong artistic appeal and belongs under the category of 'fine wine'...the more you listen, the more beautiful it gets...."
David Hagedorn is an Artist in Residence at St. Olaf College, where he teaches percussion, jazz studies and world music. He has performed extensively as a jazz percussionist and in classical performances ranging from Bach to contemporary and cross-cultural compositions. Hagedorn has a broad multicultural background: he has studied African drumming with Abraham Adzenyah at the Banff Centre for Fine Arts in Canada, was a charter member of the Lila Muni gamelan at the Eastman School of Music, and studied Cuban hand drumming and Brazilian samba with Michael Spiro and Dane Richeson at Bjorklunden in Door County, Wis. He has recorded with the George Russell Living Time Orchestra on Blue Note Recordings, jazz singer Debbie Duncan on Igmod Recordings, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra on Teldec Recordings, and also with the Phil Hey Quartet, Pete Whitman’s X-tet, and Maintime. His own solo album, SolidLiquid, is available on the artegra label. Hagedorn regularly performs in the Twin Cities with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra and with jazz groups such as the Phil Hey quartet, the X-tet, Low Blows, Eric Kamau Gravatt and Source Code.
Jun Qian has appeared as a concerto soloist with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Eastman Chamber Orchestra, the Shanghai Philharmonic, the Xiamen Philharmonic, the Baylor Symphony Orchestra and the Shangyang Opera Orchestra. In 2001, he made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Asian American International Orchestra. International appearances as principal clarinetist also include the Eastman Wind Ensemble's tours of Asia in 2000 and 2004, the North Carolina Festival Orchestra's European tour, the Kent-Blossom Music Festival, National Orchestra Institute, and the American Wind Symphony. In October 2004, he was the featured soloist at the International Performing Arts Festival in Japan, and he has appeared on National Public Radio's "Performance Today" with the Grammy-award winning Ying Quartet.
Qian is Assistant Professor at St. Olaf College; he has also served on the clarinet faculty at Nazareth College, Houghton College, and New York State University at Fredonia. He has taught chamber music at Shanghai Conservatory of Music in China, and performed as the principal clarinetist of Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1997, he won prizes in the Solo Competition at the International Clarinet Association Young Artist Competition, the Texas Young Artist Competition, and the Baylor Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition. Qian holds a B.M. from Baylor University where he was a student of Richard Shanley; and the M.M. and D.M.A. from Eastman School of Music where he studied with Kenneth Grant and Stanley Hasty. His CD, Premier Rhapsodie, and video, Playing the Clarinet, are available on the Nanjing Shine Horn label in China.
Nicola Melville is a native of New Zealand, and has lived in the United States since 1990. She has been described as having “an original and intelligent musical mind” (Waikato Times) and “…the sort of advocate any composer would love” (Dominion Post, New Zealand). She has been a prizewinner in several competitions in the U.S., and has appeared throughout the country as a recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, with live appearances broadcast on Canadian, U.S., South African and Chinese National Radios. She has also appeared in concert in Canada, England and France, and has toured New Zealand regularly. Nicola has won both the National Concerto Competition and the Auckland Star Concerto Competition in New Zealand. She attended Victoria University School of Music, Wellington, then earned Masters and Doctorate degrees from the Eastman School of Music in New York, where she was awarded the Lizzie T. Mason prize for Outstanding Graduate Pianist, and the prestigious Performers Certificate.
Melville has a special interest in contemporary music, having commissioned and premiered many works in the U.S. and in New Zealand. She is a member of the Renegade Ensemble in the Twin Cities, and the Veblen Trio. She was won grants from such organizations as Meet the Composer, Creative New Zealand, the Argosy Fund for Contemporary Music, and the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program for the commissioning, performing and recording of new music; she was also a co-director of the Heidelberg New Music Festival for many years. She has recorded for the Innova and Equilibrium labels, most recently releasing a CD of thirteen new works dedicated to her by composers from across America, including Pulitzer and Grammy nominated artists. Melville is Assistant Professor at Carleton College, and is on the resident faculty of the Chautauqua Summer Festival, New York.
For more information, contact The MacPhail Center for Music at (612) 321-0100 or visit http://www.macphail.org/intl_music.html.