TAN, Dun: Tea / TAN, Dun / CHEN, Qigang / GUO, Wenjing / MO, Wuping / QU, Xiaosong: Broken Silence
Producer:
Scheffer, Frank
Composer: Tan, Dun
Tea
Producer: Scheffer, Frank
Television Director: Scheffer, Frank
Composer: Tan, Dun
Broken Silence
Television Director: Flipse, Eline
Year of Production: 2005
Playing Time: 02:56:00
Catalogue Number: EUROARTS7758
UPC: 899132000329
Tea recounts how Chinese composer Tan Dun wrote the opera Tea, a tragic love story set against the background of the Japanese tea ceremony. He combines Eastern and Western composition techniques to create unique fusion of music between two great musical traditions. The Tea opera is the door to the mystical world of Chado, the Way of Tea. A world in which the ultimate objective is, as Tan Dun himself states, "To hear colour and to see sound". Beautifully crafted by Franck Scheffer, Tea includes interviews of Tan Dun, librettist Xu Ying and director Pierre Audi, as well as performances with the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Dutch Chamber Orchestra conducted by Tan Dun.
Broken Silence draws the portraits of five Chinese composers widely known as the founders of Chinese contemporary music : Tan Dun, Chen Qigang, Guo Wenjing, Mo Wuping and Qu Xiasong. Children of Mao's cultural revolution, a troubled time when classical music was forbidden in China, they grew up listening to local folk songs and the Communist Party's revolutionary operas. When China opened in 1978, Tan Dun and his fellow students discovered Beethoven, an experience that will change their lives. Filmed in China, New York, Paris and the Netherlands, Broken Silence won the Grand Prix Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland in 1996, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma award in Montreal and the Best Discovery award.
