|
|
|
Members
Alan J. Berkowitz
Alan Berkowitz has a PhD in Classical Chinese Language and Literature from the
University of Washington, in Seattle, and currently is Associate Professor of Chinese
at Swarthmore College, and Section Head of Chinese and Chair of the Asian Studies Program.
Alan has lived in China and Taiwan for extended periods, especially Nanjing, Beijing, and
Taipei. He has traveled throughout many regions of China, following the traces of
celebrated men of yore deep into the remote mountains they called home. He dabbles at
playing the qin, and claims that his enthusiasm far exceeds his accomplishment; but his
appreciation of the instrument is deep, and his interest longstanding.
Alan's primary research interests span Chinese culture, Han through Tang periods of the
first eight centuries of our common era. He recently published Patterns of Disengagement:
The Practice and Portrayal of Reclusion in Early Medieval China (Stanford, 2000), and is
working on biography and hagiography in medieval China. He is also editor of a series of
books on exemplary conduct in traditional Chinese culture and at work on a collaborative
project concerning the German polymath G. W. Leibniz and his association with the French
Jesuits at the Chinese court in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Alan is president of the
Early Medieval China Group and is book review editor for the journal Early Medieval China;
and he serves on the board of the T'ang Studies Society.
|
Peiyou Chang
Peiyou Chang was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She came to the United States in 1997 to study Fashion Merchandise Management at Fashion Institute of Technology and has been working in the fashion industry in New York City till now. She has been studying the Guqin since 2000, and was enlightened by Mr. Yuan Jung-Ping. Peiyou has participated in numerous qin performances and activities in New York, Taiwan and China.
She has created a Guqin website http://www.tcfb.com/guqin to promote the instrument.
In 2006, she released her first Guqin CD "The Sound of Heaven" and has been selling her album on iTunes and some other on-line music stores.
|
Stephen Dydo
Stephen Dydo (DMA, Columbia) is the president of the New York Qin Society. He has performed qin in concerts in
the US, England, Europe and China. He also is a composer, classical guitarist, teacher, and author of numerous books and articles on music;
his compositions have been played by concert organizations across the US and Europe. His specialization is in sacred music for both Western and
Buddhist rites. Currently, he is adapting Tang dynasty music for modern performance. He has also written several software programs for teaching music.
A further passion is the construction of musical instruments, including lutes, qin, and electric qin and pipa. He studied qin and calligraphy with
Jungping Yuan and plays on a qin he built. Recent performances have included sound and image installations in collaboration with the painter Susan Haire
(London and Westchester) and a performance of a concerto for pipa and Chinese orchestra at the British Museum.
His website is http://www.dydomusic.com.
|
Matthew Flannery
Matthew Flannery is an independent scholar in New Brunswick, NJ, who writes occasionally
on the arts. He has been trained in philosophy and urban planning at Reed College, the
University of Chicago, and Rutgers University. For a number of years, he has studied
Chinese poetry and calligraphy with Prof. Leon Chang. the University of Chicago, and
Rutgers University.
Flannery's enthusiasm for the arts is especially evident in his knowledge of music and
his extensive collection of musical recordings. He is also an avid collector of
contemporary calligraphy, focusing on seal carvers and men of letters.
|
Rebecca Flannery
Harpist Rebecca Flannery has appeared as a chamber
musician throughout Europe and the United States, notably Carnegie Recital
Hall, Lincoln Center and WQXR. She was a founding member of Chrysolith
(harp, flute, viola, soprano), the Chamber Musicians’ Alliance and other
chamber groups with which she has appeared on television and radio in both
the US and Europe. Immediately upon receiving her Master of Music from the
Yale School of Music, Ms. Flannery was appointed to the teaching position in
harp at The Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, a post she
continues to hold. She gives master classes regularly across North America.
Most recently, Ms Flannery has begun writing and publishing her own
compositions for harp. Her recordings include This Son So Young (soprano,
organ and harp) and Dreams and Fantasies (flute and harp) on the Towerhill
label.
|
Bun-Ching Lam
Bun-Ching Lam was born in Macao and holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition
from the University of California at San Diego. She taught at
Cornish College of Arts in Seattle for five years before moving to New York,
where she still lives and works. She has received numerous awards including
a Rome Prize, two NEA grants, fellowships from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has been
commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Bang On a Can Festival,
Ursula Oppens and the Arditti String Quartet . Her opera "wenji-
Eighteen Songs of the Nomad Flute", in which the Qin was featured
prominently, was premiered last year at the Asia Society and the Hong Kong
Arts Festival. Bun-Ching Lam?s work has been recorded on CRI, Tzadik,
Nimbus, and Koch International. Her website is http://www.bunchinglam.com.
|
Bo Lawergren
Bo Lawergren received an undergraduate degree from University of Uppsala and a PhD
(Nuclear Physics, 1964) from The Australian National University in Canberra. He settled
in New York as a Professor of Physics at Hunter College (CUNY) where he is also active as
a composer with compositions played on four continents.
Another interest began two decades ago with the study of Music Archaeology and Acoustics,
fields that focus on musical artifacts and theories during a long period (3000 BCE to 1500
CE) across a vast region (the Mediterranean to China). Lawergren's research has resulted
in about 50 scholarly articles, including many entries on ancient music in The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians (published 2001 in 29 volumes), The Oxford Encyclopedia
of Ancient Egypt (2001, 2 volumes), and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1994-99, 9
volumes). When the string instruments from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (433 BC) were
first exhibited outside China in 2000, he wrote the first analysis of them (qin, se, and
zhu) in a Western language (see Music in the Age of Confucius, ed. Jenny F. So). Further
research on the earliest phase of the qin appears in his article "The Metamorphosis of
Qin-zithers, 500 BCE - 500 CE", Orientations, May 2003.
For a complete listing of publications, click here
http://www.ph.hunter.cuny.edu/faculty/lawergren/bo_pub.htm
|
Elizabeth
Markham
Elizabeth Markham is a Research Professor of
Ethnomusicology associated with the International Center for the Study of
Early Asian and Middle Eastern Musics. She works on musics of East Asia and
is interested particularly in Sino-Japanese modal theory and in the
deciphering and analysis of the earliest musical notations for Japanese
court song and Buddhist chant. Wider interests include prosody and
melody, and comparative music theory.
Before coming to Arkansas in 2000, she held various research positions in
Europe: Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in Oriental Studies at the
University of W?zburg (Germany), Research Fellow in Music at St.
Catharine's College (Cambridge, England), Leverhulme Research Fellow in Far
Eastern Historical Musicology at The Queen's University of Belfast
(Ireland). She spent a year of fieldwork as a novice in the Gagaku orchestra
of Kasuga Taisha in Nara (Japan), and has made other ethnomusicological and
archival field trips to Japan and China. She is involved in two
international projects: the Tang Music Project (publication series Music
from the Tang Court, Cambridge University Press) and the Ancient
Asian Music Preservation Project at the Library of Congress.
|
Peter
Reis
Peter has had careers in international corporate law as well as a
25-year career as a Commander in the US Navy. He now devotes much of his time to harps, both as a collector of
antique instruments and in his business, Harps International. One of his prize acquisitions was loaned by him
to the Metropolitan Museum, NYC, where it was on display for five years and used in several concerts. Peter
has and continues to make a serious study of the history of the harp. He has long held a serious interest in
the culture and art, including music, of Asia, especially China and Japan, which has led to several trips to
Asia. He has also founded "Arts Asia" along with two of our other members, Matthew Flannery and Rebecca Flannery.
This joint venture aims to bring Chinese Calligraphy and Asian Paintings to the public's greater awareness.
|
Elaine
Sheng
Elaine Sheng has studied qin, and Chinese history and
culture generally. She serves on the Board of the New York Wellesley Club and the
advisory committee for Asia Society Young Patrons Asia Circle. She enjoys
travel, most recently to Bhutan, Berlin, Budapest, Bangladesh, Beijing... you can see the pattern. She currently works in the cosmetics industry.
|
Tomoko Sugawara
Tomoko Sugawara (born in Tokyo, Japan) took up the Irish harp at age twelve and the grand harp at
sixteen. She graduated from Tokyo University of Fine Arts as a harp student of Ms. Sumire Kuwajima. Since 1991 she also plays replicas of the angular
harp (Chinese konghou; Japanese kugo) which flourished in the Far East 500 - 1100 CE. She has given numerous solo recitals on both the concert harp and
the kugo at major venues including Seventh World Harp Congress (Prague 1999); Indiana University (2003); The Shosoin Exhibition (Nara 2003);
Fifth Symposium for Music Archaeology (Berlin 2006); Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Women's University of Japan
(all in 2007); Princeton University; Tenth World Harp Congress, Amsterdam (both in 2008) - and she plays with a number of orchestras in Japan.
Victor (Tokyo) has issued her solo CD "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms" (1996), and her improvisations against a saxophone can be
heard on the CD "East Meets West" (1998).
Many composers have dedicated kugo compositions to her, and several makers have built her angular harps.
Currently, she is a Fellow of the Asian Cultural Council and a grantee of the Rohm Foundation.
|
John Thompson
John Thompson began studying qin in Taiwan in 1974. While living in Hong Kong from 1976
to 2001 he reconstructed many old melodies from Ming dynasty handbooks, in particular Shen
Qi Mi Pu (1425) and Xilutang Qintong (1549). Since moving to New York in 2001 he has
continued his qin studies and performance. His website, http://www.silkqin.com
contains a wealth of information about the qin, and is arguably the richest
English-language resource for information on the qin on the Internet.
|
Rembrandt Wolpert
Rembrandt Wolpert is Professor of Ethnomusicology. He holds degrees in
Sinology, Mongolian Studies, Musicology, and Computer Science from Munich
(Germany), Cambridge (England), and Otago (New Zealand) Universities. He
held senior research appointments at Peterhouse, Cambridge University
(England), the Research Institute for Humanistic Studies, Kyoto University
(Japan), the Department of Chinese Studies, W?zburg University (Germany),
and was Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at The Queen's University of Belfast
(Ireland), Chair and Professor of Ethnomusicology and Systematic Musicology
at the University of Amsterdam, before joining the University of Arkansas in
2000.
Dr. Wolpert has conducted fieldwork in China, Japan, and Ireland. His
research interests include musical grammars, computational tools in (ethno)musicology,
historical sources in Far Eastern ethnomusicology, and organology. Together
with Dr. Elizabeth Markham he co-ordinates the International Center for the
Study of Early Asian and Middle Eastern Musics
at Fulbright College and the Tang Music Project's
international web-site. Dr. Wolpert's work on Chinese and Japanese
historical musical sources connect him to the Music Preservation Project of
the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
|
Marilyn Wong Gleysteen
Marilyn Wong Gleysteen is an art historian and a fourth-generation Chinese born in Hawaii,
where as a child she studied piano and viola. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College,
she entered the program in Chinese Art & Archaeology at Princeton University, where she
received her doctorate in 1983. From 1966-68 she worked at the Palace Museum in Taipei,
where she made a brief start at learning the qin with Wang Chen-hua. From 1973-75 she was
assistant curator of Chinese art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and later taught at
Yale, George Washington University, the University of Virginia, Columbia University in the
City of New York, the University of Maryland and Georgetown University. Her publications in
Chinese painting and calligraphy include co-authoring Studies in Connoisseurship (1973) and
Traces of the Brush: Studies in Chinese Calligraphy (1977).
Appreciation of Chinese art is still her major pastime, but she has retired from academic
research and full-time teaching to pursue her interests in music, dance and opera. In 1999
she attended the symposium accompanying "Resonance of the Qin" and the next year decided
to begin serious study of the guqin with Yuan Jung-ping. Her qin-related activities include
acting as corresponding secretary of the New York Qin Society. In 2002 she performed at the
Second Annual Jiangsu Province Qin Conference, participating in the fall trip with society members,
as well as visiting qin players in Hong Kong. In October of 2004 Dr. Gleysteen was invited to perform
the guqin at the Library of Congress to celebrate the Tenth Anniversary of the Asian American
Association of the Library. In the summer of 2005 she traveled to Beijing where she met the qin-maker
Wang Peng 王鵬, and paid a call on the connoisseur and
antiquarian Wang Shixiang 王世襄 , whom she asked to inscribe the name 玄蘊 on her new qin.
|
Mingmei Yip
Mingmei Yip was born and grew up in Hong Kong and since 1992 has resided in the United
States. She received her Ph. D. in musicology from the University of Paris, Sorbonne,
and subsequently was appointed lecturer in music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and
later senior lecturer (associate professor) at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Yip has lectured widely on and performed the qin at Oberlin Conservatory, the Cleveland
Museum of Art, Cleveland Orchestra Women's Association, the University of Paris, Oxford
University and the China Institute in New York. Her publications include numerous articles
and books, among them The Art of Qin Music, Qin Music and Chinese Culture, The World of
Music, Never Poles Apart (short stories and essays), and Good Time on Earth (essays on
Zen Buddhism illustrated by her own paintings and calligraphy). A sixth book, Qin Music
and Zen Buddhism, has been accepted for publication in Taiwan. She had her one person show
on Guan Yin - the Goddess of Compassion -- at the New York Open Center in SoHo, on December 2002.
|
Jung-ping Yuan
Jung-ping Yuan founded the New York Qin Society and was its first president. He began
his study of the qin with Taipei master Sun Yu-ch'in (1915-1990) and later studied with
the Suzhou master Wu Zhaoji (1908-1997). Also known as a composer, Yuan has published
pieces that have won him Taiwan's Golden Tripod award as best composer/arranger. After
immigrating to the United States, he has devoted himself to the study, practice, and
teaching of the guqin and traditional Chinese calligraphy. During 1999-2001 he lectured on
the culture of the qin in the music department of Columbia University, and in 2000 at
Swarthmore College. His public recitals of the qin have included solo performances in
the 1997 Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Wu-men Qin Society of Master Wu Zhaoji
held at the He Garden, Suzhou. In 1999 at the China Institute Symposium Resonance of the
Qin, he also acted as consultant and performed as soloist for the video recording of the
exhibition. In 2002, he performed at the Second Annual Jiangsu Province Qin Conference.
Yuan practices qigong, taijiquan and collects antique guqin. He is also the founder and
teacher of the Zizen School that promotes and teaches healthy living through tajiquan,
qigong, Chinese calligraphy and meditation. The Zizen website can be located at
http://www.zizen.com Mr. Yuan is currently teaching Guqin at Taiwan Nanhua University and Shangdong Qindao University.
|
|
