Performers, Aside 4 @ the Red Room, November 2013

Saturday, November 30th, 2013 Time: 6:30pm – 10:00pm
Red Room’s fourth exclusive event, where five artists share their most imaginative, courageous and inspiring performances.

Performers:

Conor Murphy Singer/ Songwriter

conor aside 4

Conor Murphy, Aside4

Bio: Conor Murphy’s compelling Irish voice carries any crowd, and when pulling back to circle around a more delicate turn in a song, audiences instinctively lean in to hear where he’s going next, lost in the narrative.

One remembers his work long after listening not only for its uniqueness, but his uncanny and marvelous ability to transmit the richness of human experience into word and song.

The subtle, enveloping, and sometimes explosive presence Murphy wields onstage combines remarkably with his lyrics, which carry all of the raw and the marvelous of life. His work inspires a nostalgia for the present, like all great art.

Performance statement: With every song comes the tale of its creation. No one person will be left unengaged, of this you are assured.

www.conorbarneymurphy.com (under construction, but ready soon!)

E: conor-murphy@hotmail.co.uk

——————————————————————————————————

Mark van Tongeren Sound Explorer

mark aside 4

Mark Tongeren, Aside 4

Bio: Mark van Tongeren is a sound explorer, experimental vocalist and cultural musicologist, well-known for his work on Tuvan throat singing and other kinds of overtone singing around the world. He wrote a textbook Overtone Singing (2004) and presented his work internationally from the USA and New Zealand to Taiwan. In 2013 he received his PhD from Leiden University with his thesis ‘Thresholds of the Audible. About the Polyphony of the Body’. Mark is a member of the arts/sound-collective Oorbeek and founded Parafonia and Superstringtrio. He lives in Taiwan with his Taiwanese wife Wen Yo-June and their two children.

Performance statement: For this Red Room I have prepared a sound massage, to clean the audience’ ears, brains and cells. Simple, flowing vocal sounds (though with a twist …. ) that can swallow up all the confused energy in your body-mind. Close your eyes, open your ears, and experience soundspace the way you have never experienced it before. Forget what you were doing, what troubled you, forget even who you are and where you are. Enjoy some moments of pure silence, of simple being afterwards. And come out refreshed.

E: mark@fusica.nl

 

Hu Chien, (Allia Hu) Musical Theater Producer

Allia Hu, Aside4

Allia Hu, Aside4

Bio: Born in Nanging, and settled in Taiwan, Hu Chien 胡健, (Allia Hu) founded Miling’an Musical Theater in 2009, and has since become an important preservationist for Paiwanese culture and a promoter for Taiwanese performing arts.
He is a musical theater producer. “Miling’an Forest” was premiered in Taiwan in 2011, and this work was awarded the 2010-2012 grant of “pursuit of excellence in the performing arts” funded by the National Culture and Arts Foundation. The musical theater pioneered to be managed as a Broadway show in Taiwan, and is now played regularly twice every week. By means of his artiscit works, he hopes to send out his passion for aboriginal culture through the eyes of the tribesmen and their perspectives.
www.milingan.org
Performance statement:
A Journey into the Ancient Heritage
Born in Nanging, and finally settling his roots in Taiwan, Allia will be sharing his life journey through the pursuit of art, sharing a new idea of “beauty” in life that originates from the tribe – the kind that connects the hearts, the kind that opens up to the simplest conversations.

Andrianna Smela Soprano

Andrienna Aside4

Andrianna, Aside4

Bio: Soprano Andrianna Smela has performed eclectic repertoire encompassing Early Music, Zarzuela, and improvisational opera. Most recently, Andrianna appeared in the original cabaret Ich Liebe Jesus at the Brick Theatre in New York City. She frequently collaborates with pianist Maria Dessena in performances of unique Classical Cabaret programs. The core repertoire of these shows is the music of Kurt Weill; the programming also includes pieces by Schoenberg, Poulenc, Bolcom, songs popularized by Edith Piaf, and tangos by Polish composer Petersburski. The duo has performed at the Metropolitan Room, the Liederkranz Club in New York City, and the Jazz Bar as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Andrianna’s opera and concert experience includes: Mrs. Peachum in Weill’s The Threepenny Opera with the Princeton Festival, Belinda in Dido and Aeneas with the Bronx Opera, and Mařenka in The Bartered Bride with the Liederkranz Foundation, as well as Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria, and Bach’s Magnificat with the West Islip Symphony and Sophisticated Strings.
Andrianna graduated from the IU School of Music and has attended summer programs at the Jarvis Conservatory Zarzuela workshop and OperaWorks. She currently resides in Taipei.

Performance statement: The composer Kurt Weill achieved a masterful blend of high art and popular musical idioms.  As a Jew in 1930’s Berlin, he was forced into exile, first fleeing to Paris and then to New York.  Although Weill was always an outsider, in each city he perfectly captured the energy and spirit of the time and place.  I’ll be singing songs representative of his work in each of these locales.

E: andrianna_smela@yahoo.com

Tina Ma: Vocalist and Musician

Tina Ma, Aside4

Tina Ma, Aside4

Bio: 

Like most artists, in younger days Tina was a Taiwanese hippy, rebelling against anything that interfered with her free will. She loved playing the guitar and learned American music while participating in all the social movements when Taiwan was seeking its identity in the early 80s.

After 30 years, she knows that the voice and sound must come from her own ground and soil now.

Having explored different art forms, she has finally chosen telling Taiwanese stories through songs from the ancient Chinese to current days, and to follow her bliss…

She likes to see herself as someone who uses this ancient musical instrument – moon guitar, to share shamanic spirits from nature and folklore of the mother earth. The instrument is two stringed, but says a lot in a simple ways, as most of life’s wisdom does.

长发披肩步轻盈,
身着彩衣特随性,
出行总会携月琴,
沉醉吟唱起共鸣,
最爱山林我独行,
花鸟鱼虫皆欢迎,
Tina 是她英文名,
中文名唤马丽英。

Tina will bring her new love “single string 一弦琴”
She will do a story  around Chinese tea.

EMAIL: taiwanteama@gmail.com