FantAsia!: Celebration of Asian Music and Food in Washington Heights/Inwood
FantAsia!, by INTERWOVEN, is a concert program and event celebrating the composition of Asian folklore-inspired works on the night of the Lunar New Year 2024. Taking place in Washington Heights, this project will include three original composition commissions, three world premiere performances, include a live discussion held at intermission with our commissioned composers, Stephanie Chou, Vicente Hansen Atría, and Michael Ippolito, and finish with a post-concert reception of delicacies curated by a neighborhood Asian restaurant.
Holding this event in Washington Heights at a community hub allows INTERWOVEN the opportunity to perform Asian folklore-inspired pieces with traditional instruments in a neighborhood with only 2.5% of Asian residents; this is the lowest number of Asian representation in a borough in Manhattan, according to recent data released by the NYU Furman Center.
To get our audience acquainted with the sonority of historical Asian instruments, the concert will begin with historical compositions written to highlight traditional Eastern Asian instruments such as the koto or Japanese zither, shamisen or Japanese 3-string guitar, erhu or Chinese 2-string violin, piri or Korean bamboo flute, and saenghwang or Korean handheld bagpipe. During intermission, we will hold a curated conversation with the performers and composers, giving our audience the opportunity to learn about the Asian folk tales which inspired each composition they will soon hear, as well as demonstrations of the traditional Asian Instruments. Following this discussion, they will hear three world-premiere performances written by our featured composers Stephanie Chou, Vicente Hansen Atría, Michael Ippolito. Our composers, all coming from different heritages and possessing unique lived cultural experiences, are each composing a five to ten minute piece inspired by a piece of Asian folklore. Their pieces will feature at least one traditional Asian instrument already featured in our program, and pair it with a traditional string quartet of two violins, one viola, and one cello.
