CHIME Conference, October 5-9

The 10th International CHIME meeting, with the theme "Exploring China's Musical Past", was held October 5 to 9, 2005, in Amsterdam. This was a very large gathering of some of the world’s preeminent scholars and performers of Chinese Music, and was coincident with a month-long festival of Chinese culture throughout old Amsterdam. A number of NYQS members participated in this event:

 

Bo Lawergren - " The Earliest Qin: Foreign Influences"

Rembrandt Wolpert - "Metronomes, Matrices, and other Musical Monsters"

Elizabeth Markham - " Tang melody in Heian editions?"

Yi Mingmei - "Women Qin Players in the Musical Heritage of China from the Han to the Present" 

Rembrandt chaired a panel, "Yuefu Labs", during which Elizabeth gave a presentation and Stephen Dydo performed four new pieces for qin and pipa.

 

Stephen and  Mingmei also took part in a qin concert on the final day.

NYQS Meeting

An informal meeting of the New York Qin Society was held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on October 8, 2005, at some dingy Indonesion restaurant. Present were Bo, Elizabeth, Francois Picard, Mingmei, Rembrandt, and Stephen. Stephen called the meeting to order and took notes.

 

The first item of business was to establish a date for a meeting in New York when all present could attend. The date selected was Sunday, December 10. (This will presumably not be the very next meeting.) The venue was not determined.

 

There was a discussion about the annual conference. It was decided that the next one should not be too ambitious, and some titles were suggested, including: "Qin Dao", "Qin in Song", "Spring Flowers" (for a spring meeting).

 

Francois gave a brief report on a recent discovery (in Paris, I believe) of two qin owned by Louis Laloy, a sinologist, author of "La Musique Chinoise", and a friend of Debussey who inspired some of his Oriental moments.

 

Stephen Dydo