by Lin Fang-yi ( Curator, Weiwuying Contemporary Music Platform; Artist Director, Studio Acht）

In 2019, Weiwuying Contemporary Music Platform was launched with 3 performances, which set a benchmark for the platform’s target. The first one was the Stereoscope by Ensemble KNM Berlin, who specializes in atypical forms of performance. This program merged means of installation art and musical theatre; it required the audience to be positioned closely near the performers in order to view, listen and experience the fantasies in the stories and the redefined performing form. The second one, The Modern-Day Flavours of Namyin and Naamyam was a recent experimental masterpiece by Nanyin artist Cai Yayi and electronic musician Dickson DEE. The gentle and delicate Nanyin was like tinder, detonating the resonance of electronic sounds and other instruments. In the third concert The Sound of Bloom’s Epoch, the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble performed awarded pieces of young composers from diverse cultural backgrounds, which showcased the unique brightness of the young artists and celebrated the acoustic aesthetics of the next generation.

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Moreover, the whole year of training enables artists to deepen professional skills and widen the breadth of art. For example, the Artist’s Workshop allows ideas to be experimented. This year, there are two more training programmes: the Cross-Border Manufacturing of Asian Traditional Musical Instruments and the Nanyin Experiment Group. The former explores different traditional Asian musical instruments in terms of how to blend them together while maintaining each’s individual cultural characteristic; the latter develops various possibilities of the roles that Nanguan Music could play in contemporary performing arts. Another training is the Masterclass Workshop, held by the international renewed masters of impromptus performance Park Je-chun and Miyeon. It offers intense individual and ensemble classes in order to develop the students’ potential for improvisation. Moreover, the research project ‘Creative (Mis) Understandings – Methodologies of Inspiration’ has been introduced into the platform. This project is sponsored by the Austrian Science Fund (Wissenschaftsfonds, FWF) and promoted by the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, aiming to explore the creative inspiration and performance practice obtained in cultural studies. The Academy Ensemble led by conductor Lin Liao offers the first systematic training for contemporary music performance in Taiwan, with the purpose of cultivating world-class Taiwanese artists.

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In addition, two international cooperation has been launched during the first year of the platform, which effectively created more opportunities for Taiwanese artists to perform in the international arena. The first one is exchanging invitations for performance with the South Korean Jeonju International Sori Festival, and the second is exchanging young composer and conductor trainees with Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation in Hungary.

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The development status of contemporary music is an important index of musical culture evaluation in many countries. Having Weiwuying as a strong base, we look forward to showing the unique charm and energy of Taiwanese music.