About the Electro Acoustic Cải lương Music Night

It was the most gorgeous experimental music gig that I have witnessed at ATK for a long time. The live performance presented three brand new artists in the genre: Luong Hue Trinh, a young electronic musician who also acted as the show lead, Nguyen Thuy Dung, an improvisational zitherist, and Dao Van Trung, a prominent artist in cải lương(*) violin.

“We come from different backgrounds, but we have one thing in common – the love for Vietnamese traditional music. The stories that you once knew whether they are private or communal, depressing or cheering will be told again by our music and in a completely different way”, said the artists. Indeed, each of them has their own background, and in fact, their current styles are also not at all similar.

Luong Hue Trinh graduated from Vietnam National Academy of Music, majoring in performing Jazz, but shortly afterwards she found her way to electronic music from passion and enthusiasm. Even though Trinh is quite a decent piano/keyboard player she’s more into computer and technology equipment, thus the entire program was directed and edited by Trinh on her computer and supporting electronic devices.

Whereas Nguyen Thuy Dung is a graduate from the traditional music department specializing in zither, also from Vietnam National Academy of Music. She has attended short courses on contemporary music and improvisational performance, and was once trained by famous Vietnamese zither artist Nguyen Thanh Thuy. The zither in her hands became more customized with a wider range of sounds. Her improvisations were rooted in traditional materials but quickly moved to a broader and further scope where the zither sounds became more creative and powerful yet still very feminine.

Artist Dao Van Trung, the eldest in the group, comes from another origin. He has a background in cải lương music, but also is an excellent graduate from Vietnam National Academy of Music in orchestral music composition. This veteran cải lương violinist’s graduate work for violin and orchestra was ranked first in the graduation ceremony, due to the traditionally influenced music that he composed for symphony orchestra. That great part of cải lương violin extracted from the graduate work was performed by himself in this exciting concert at ATK. It was very rich in color, warm in tradition yet modern in instrument.

Read from the organizers’ foreword: “Still on the road looking for new ingredients and expressions in music, the performance will give you different perspectives on traditional art when it is combined with powerful electronic music. And the sounds from the instruments themselves will also be processed and modified through computer before reaching your ears. It’s the tale of contemporary and traditional art that will be told this Thursday 15 August at ATK”.

Although the actual performance did not fully live up to the introduction, partially because the electronic background music was not strong enough and the processed sounds via computer (zither and violin) were not very clear, from a skilled and fastidious listener’s point of view, I still think that this program with four small works was a huge success, which was a very good and steady start for the trio on the path of traditionally-inspired improvisational and experimental music which is full of hardship but not yet cherished by the public.

I hope that the group will continue to work on larger and more long-term projects that are possible to present on a bigger scale such as in an experimental theater in the future.

A lots of thanks go to the artists, the audience and CAMA ATK for their support for such rare experimental creation which is necessary and valuable in this limited condition in Hanoi particularly and the country generally.

Words by Vu Nhat Tan, translated into English by Hanoi Grapevine, photos by Mathias Rossignol (The Onion Cellar)

(*) cải lương: a form of modern folk opera in Vietnam, very popular in the South of the country