Folk and Traditional Arts

Six performances including rarely heard Buddhist temple music were presented in Minneapolis, St Paul, Bloomington and Northfield. In one performance during A Passage to China at the Mall of America, the Northfield Youth Choir, Carleton College Choir, and Carleton College Chinese Music Ensemble performed to an audience of over 400 people. Audience, performers, presenters, and students response was all used to evaluate the success of my program. I transcribed Zhi Hua Buddhist temple music from recording and then into Western notation, and have posted some of it online. I arranged dozens of scores for Chinese and Western ensembles and choir, and participated in performances of them at the local Chinese community’s “Passages to China” at the Mall of America, Carleton College, Northfield Middle School, Northfield Buddhist Meditation Center, the University of Minnesota, and McNally Smith College. I also lectured at the schools involved and taught the music to the choirs and musicians. The “Passages of China” performance included 90 total performers from the Northfield Youth Choir and Carleton College Choir and Chinese Music Ensemble. This event was stellar in magnitude and supported by the entire Twin Cities Chinese community. It took months of planning and included over 55 participating organizations that were showcasing Chinese culture for the Chinese community and general public. All events helped preserve the temple music and bring it to the general public in performance. The music was also preserved trough transcriptions from recordings I put into Western notation for the first time ever and have made available for mass audiences by posting them online at www.chinesepipa.com/zhihuascores.html. 2: All events were well attended, but “Passages to China” especially increased the participation of Minnesotans with over 90 choir members and instrumentalists performing the temple music I transcribed and arranged. Participants were chosen by those who had shown interest in the past (both choirs, the Chinese music ensemble, and community groups I lectured to). The main barrier was the fact that the pieces were sung in Chinese. This barrier was overcome by diligent coaching by myself and by spelling out the sounds of the Chinese text phonetically, as well as by having numerous rehearsals.