DVD Videos

Paper, normally a utilitarian material, becomes a solo instrument in Tan Dun’s ingenious and inventive Paper Concerto, fusing orchestral music and organic sounds to create accessible, even melodious, music that is almost beyond imagination. Intriguing sounds are created by all manner of different papers, so that they appear elemental rather than simplistic, tapping into something basic in the fabric of our lives. In a remarkable and unforgettable concert experience, Tan Dun directs the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and soloist Haruka Fujii in a vivid demonstration of his belief that orchestral music, far from being static and traditional, still has the capacity for experimentation and the power to stimulate in extraordinary ways.

‘Musically tightened, the non-narrative concerto has become a magical ceremony…Paper Concerto makes a fine companion piece to his Water Concerto.’ Los Angeles Times

‘We are surrounded by paper in our lives: our imaginations are captured and recorded in words or pictures, as we express newly discovered feelings about ourselves and the world around us. For a long time, I have been developing the idea of organic music, which embodies sounds of nature, water, paper, ceramics, and the mind. The environment is related to our lives, and spiritually, everything germinates from one seed of creativity.’ Tan Dun

Bonus material:

Short Film - Paper: The Song of Nature

Tan Dun Demonstrates Paper Music

Tan Dun Teaches Paper Instruments

Tan Dun’s hypnotic three-movement Water Concerto is intoxicating, both visually and aurally. Using water as a musical instrument, this extraordinary piece uses innovative techniques to explore the musicality of the sounds of water. Virtuoso percussionist and soloist David Cossin displays remarkable genius as he deftly creates unique, sensuous, organic and sometimes celestial sounds using a range of water-based instruments. Conducted by the composer, the distinctive accompaniment of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, reflecting Dun’s personal combination of Chinese and Western musical traditions, is carefully interwoven and combined with the water percussion to produce a uniquely enchanting performance.

‘This work was one of the most astonishing pieces of music that I’ve ever heard.’ The Australian

‘Organic music concerns both matters of everyday life and matters of the heart. These ideas find their origin in the animistic notion that material objects have spirits residing in them, an idea everpresent in the old village where I grew up in China. Paper can talk to the violin, the violin to water. Water can communicate with trees, and trees with the moon, and so on. In other words, every little thing in the totality of things, the entire universe, has a life and a soul.’ Tan Dun

Bonus material:

Short Film – Water: The Tears of Nature

Tan Dun Teaches Water Instruments

In ‘Marco Polo, an opera within an opera’, composer Tan Dun portrays the Venetian explorer’s travels to the Far East as a journey of both inner and physical discovery, a voyage depicting spiritual experiences as well as a geographical expedition. At the same time the work, on a libretto by Paul Griffiths, can be seen as a compositional adventure of the composer himself, unifying the various cultural worlds he occupies: a blend of Western avant garde and Oriental traditions. Pierre Audi’s mythical staging and Jean Kalman’s fabulous set design complement the composer’s own musical direction, forging the dazzlingly versatile soloists, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and Capella Amsterdam to a stunning symbiosis of elements across time and space, a true testimony to cultures intertwined in globalisation.

Tan Dun’s Marco Polo was, for me, a multi-dimensional experience which went beyond my expectations and indeed overwhelmed my senses… Here was an opera of our generation: a fusion of elements across time and space, a true testimony to the way our worlds have become intertwined in the globalisation process.’ Anne Ku, Bonjournal.com

Bonus material:

Illustrated synopsis.

Cast gallery.

Documentary: The Music of Tomorrow – including interviews with the creative team and principle cast members.

Commissioned by the MET in the mid-1990s, this spectacular new production was one of the most highly anticipated cultural events of the 2006-07 Metropolitan Opera season.

The Opera tells of Emperor Qin’s quest for a national anthem for his new country and his ill-fated decision to force a rebellious but talented young composer to write it. Tragedy results following the composer’s love affair with the emperor’s crippled daughter, including the deaths of three principal characters. Plácido Domingo, as Emperor Qin, leads an all-star ensemble in this classic story, ideally suited to the opera stage.

The First Emperor combines the expressive power of traditional ancient Chinese singing with the long musical lines of Italian Opera. This juxtaposition of musical cultures illustrates Tan Dun’s musical style and influences perfectly. In his music not only East and West but ancient and modern coexist.

One of just six composers to conduct their own works at the Met, Tan Dun lead all the performances of the first run of the opera.

Revered Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou (Hero, Raise the Red Lantern) directs and was instrumental in the opera’s creation, having worked closely with Tan Dun while he composed the music.

The costumes are designed by Emi Wada, who won an Oscar for her work in the 1986 movie Ran. Over the course of a year and a half, Wada designed over 600 costumes. The quality of Wada’s exceptional work is apparent throughout.

Production: Zhang Yimou, Set designer: Fan Yue, Costume designer: Emi Wada, Lighting designer: Duane Schuler, Co-director: Wang Chaoge & Choreographer: Dou Dou Huang

10 years in the making, 2 films by Evans Chan trace the artist's life, career and pianism. Strumming the strings of a grand piano like a harp and performing Beethoven on toy piano are among the surprising scenes in Sorceress of the New Piano (2004), which celebrates the trans-cultural career of Singapore-born, New York-based pianist Margaret Leng Tan, hailed by The New Yorker as "the diva of avant-garde pianism".

The film traces Tan's quest for a new pianistic language, performing ground-breaking works by masters Henry Cowell, George Crumb and her longtime mentor John Cage, as well as by maverick composers of the next generation.

Featured performers and critics include Joan LaBarbara, Edward Rothstein (New York Times), Mark Swed (Los Angeles Times), and Joshua Kosman (San Francisco Chronicle) share their thoughts on Tan's artistry and musical lineage.

Incorporating 1944 footage of Merce Cunningham's dance, Jasper Johns' art and a Marcel Duchamp film; Sorceress also highlights Tan's latest transformation as the champion of new repertoire for the toy piano.

BONUS FILM:The Maverick Piano (2007)

The Maverick Piano is an excursion into the sonic world of the avant-garde piano, as Margaret Leng Tan gives complete performances of 6 works by Cage, Satie, Ge Gan-ru and Toby Twining

The film represents the grand piano in various transformations: as a conventional keyboard (Cage: In a Landscape); prepared piano, also played with fists/forearms (Cage: In the Name of the Holocaust); as a stringed instrument, both plucked and bowed, juxtaposed with images of Cage's artwork (Cage: Music for Piano No. 2); strummed while played from the crook of the piano (Ge Gan-ru: Pipa/Ancient Music); in combination with toy piano (Twining: Satie Blues, Gymnopédie No. 3 arr. Margaret Leng Tan, in collaboration with Great Small Works)

Filmed in China, New York, Paris and the Netherlands, Broken Silence won the Grand Prix Visions du Réel in Nyon (Switzerland) 1996, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma award in Montreal and the Best Discovery Documentary award