25 April 2010, 7pm
Ricefield Arts and Cultural Centre, Glasgow
Admission FREE (booking recommended)

This multimedia collaboration will draw on Jacobi’s performance and works on paper, and will feature spontaneous improvised vocals and music by the award nominated Harmony Ensemble; made up of the fascinating voice of Fong Liu, the haunting traditional Chinese sounds of Zheng and Percussion (played by Hooi Ling Eng) and bamboo flutes and bawu (played by Eddie McGuire). Liverpool based poets, David Greygoose and Eleanor Rees, will perform accompanied by live music with parallel Chinese translations supplied by Dr. Yupin Chung, Cuator of Chinese Art, Burrell Collection.  The ensemble will round off the evening with a selection of traditional songs and music by the Harmony Ensemble.

Ricefield Arts and Cultural Centre, is pleased to present a unique event bringing together improvised music using traditional Chinese instruments, spoken word performances and projected artworks by German artist Thomas Jacobi.

Programme

7- 7.15 Refreshments: Chinese Tea
7.15- 7.30 Cleansing the House with Ink
Visual images of the 2005 performance at Mei Ting, Fuzhou, China by Thomas Jacobi, with poetry reading by David Greygoose, Eleanor Rees and Yupin Chung. Gu Qin music by Lin Fa.
7.30-7.45 The Shadow of the Hand Writes before the Thought
Images by Thomas Jacobi and live improvised music and vocals by Harmony Ensemble with voice by David Greygoose.
7.45- 8.00 Interval
8- 8.15 Brushstrokes of Breath
Poetry reading by David Greygoose with live improvisation by Harmony Ensemble
8.15- 8.30 Eliza and the Bear
Poetry reading by Eleanor Rees with music by David Greygoose
8.30- 8.45 Chinese Music and Song performed by Harmony Ensemble
Fong Liu (voice); Eddie McGuire (bamboo flutes); Hooi Ling Eng (percussion and zheng)
with Xian Shan (accordion)

Ricefield Arts and Cultural Centre

Ricefield Arts and Cultural Centre is a unique hub of creative activity in Scotland, creating dynamic forms of engagement which aim to explore the vitality of visual culture. With an emphasis on cultural diversity, Ricefield supports artists of Chinese descent to educate and develop an audience for varied artistic sensibilities.
http://www.ricefield.org.uk/

Participating Artists

Dr Yupin Chung (Curator)
Dr Chung is now Curator of Chinese Art in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow Museums and Honorary Fellow in the Department of History of Art, University of Glasgow. Previous posts include National Museums Liverpool, Victoria and Albert Museum, Shanghai Art Museum and National Palace Museum, Taipei.

David Greygoose / Dave Ward (Poet)
Dave Ward is a poet and short story writer for children, young people and adults. He has been leading workshops since 1971 and has been the co-ordinator for The Windows Project in Liverpool since its establishment in 1976. He has given performances throughout Britain and in the Far East and has been the Writer-in-Residence at Nanyang University, Singapore, 1999. His work has been broadcast on BBC 2, Radio 4, Radio 1 and BBC Schools Radio.

Thomas Jacobi (Artist)
Born in Aachen, Germany, Thomas Jacobi gained his MA in Fine Arts on Painting and Printmaking at the Academy for Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria. He spent most of the 90s living and working in Taipei, and Thomas Jacobi’s artwork has been largely inspired by traditional Chinese art. Jacobi has been working, lecturing and exhibiting extensively in China, Germany and the UK, the artist lives and works in Glasgow since 2009.
http://mo-works.blogspot.com/

Lin Fa (Musician)
Born in Taipei to a family with a musical tradition, Lin Fa has been trained in Gu Qin since 12. Travelled around China and Taiwan learning and performing, Lin Fa entered China Central Academy of Music in Beijing in 2001, where he was supervised by Professor Li Xiangting. He received multiple awards in his university years, and has held several solo concerts in Taiwan. He also founded the Taigu Qinguan in Taipei in 2007 which became the hub of promoting the skills and performance of Gu Qin.

Eleanor Rees (Poet)
Eleanor Rees was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in 1978. Her pamphlet collection Feeding Fire received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and her first full length collection Andraste’s Hair (Salt, 2007) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards. Rees works in the community as a poet, running writing workshops for The Windows Project and is also a part-time Lecturer in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University.
http://eleanorrees.com/

Harmony Chinese Music Ensemble

Nominated by the Pearl Award in 2005 for creative excellence, Harmony has enthralled audiences with their wide ranging repertoire of folk music, song and dance from different ethic groups in China. Harmony was founded in 2002 by Yanmei Wu and Eddie McGuire following informal music sessions.
http://harmonyensemble.co.uk/

Eng Hooi Ling (Musician)
Born in Malaysia, Hooi Ling studied the piano with Valerie Ross in Malaysia and later with Fali Pavri at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Hooi Ling first developed a passion for world music when she was an ethnomusicology student in Germany and is now immersed in musical traditions from China, Java, Bali and Ghana.

Liu Fong (Musician)
Originally from Suzhou in the Jiangsu province of China, Fong has an amazing ability to render and adapt her voice to a wide range of styles, from the vivacious Mongolian mountain songs and gentle folk lullabies to the swing of 1930’s Shanghai jazz and modern Chinese pop. Taught by her father, an accomplished Peking opera singer, at the age of five, Fong draws inspiration from her Chinese folk tradition, Peking Opera, Chinese Jazz and modern Chinese pop.
www.fongliu.co.uk

Eddie McGuire (Musician)
Born in Glasgow, Eddie studied composition with James Iliff at the Royal Academy of Music, London (1966-70) and then with the Swedish composer Ingvar Lidholm in Stockholm. His works have been regularly broadcasted and commissions have come from the Glasgow University McEwen Bequest, the New Music Group of Scotland, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the St Magnus Festival, and the Edinburgh International Festival.
www.scottishmusiccentre.com/edward_mcguire/