Crossing Frets for Tapping

$15/$10 Members & Students

A cross-cultural live improvisation featuring contemporary and traditional world artists. Join us for an evening with virtuoso Chinese pipa player Min Xiao-Fen and Korean komungo player Jin Hi Kim as they team up with award winning rhumba tapper Max Pollak.

Bios

A world recognized virtuoso in both orchestral and underground styles, pipa player, vocalist and composer Min Xiao-Fen is known for her fluid style. Ms. Min began her career as a pipa soloist with the Nanjing Traditional Music Orchestra in China by winning the Jiangsu national pipa competition.Since she moved to the United States in 1992, she has been a featured soloist with the Pacific Symphony, San Diego Symphony, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Macao Orchestra and many others. Min has performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, New York Guitar Festival, San Francisco Jazz Festival, Amsterdam-China Festival, Utrecht International Lute Festival, Geneva Music Festival, TUM Festival in Finland, Macao Arts Festival, Shanghai Spring International Music Festival, Beijing Modern Music Festival, Great Mountains International Music Festival in Korea and Festivalgerie 2010 and 2011. She has performed with and premiered the work of such noted composers as John Zorn, Derek Bailey, Tan Dun, Randy Weston, Philip Glass and many others. She made an appearance on Bjцrk's album, Volta, and later performed as Bjцrk's special guest at Madison Square Garden. As a composer, Min received a commission in 2007 for "Return of the Dragon" from The Kitchen. She was a featured composer and solo performer in "Blue Pipa" for the American Composers Orchestra's Composer Out Front series. Her "Ghost Masks" was commissioned and performed by Min–Wu–Xu at the Glatt & Verkehrt Festival in Krems in 2009. Her "Dim Sum" was premiered and performed at Interpretations in 2010, the Undead Jazzfest 2011, in 2012 at WQXR-FM New York Public Radio, and her newest album "Dim Sum” with guest percussionist Satoshi Takeishi was released December 15, 2012 at The Stone (John Zorn’s venue) . Min was a curator at The Stone and Museum of Chinese in America in New York. She is the founder of Blue Pipa, Inc. www.bluepipa.org.

Jin Hi Kim is a Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition and internationally acclaimed innovative komungo (Korean fourth century fretted board zither) virtuoso. Kim featured on Voice of America, PRI's The World and BBC-Global Hit, has introduced the indigenous instrument for the first time into Western contemporary music scene and has composed for the Kronos Quartet, Chamber Music Society for Lincoln Center, American Composers Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project and New Haven Symphony. Kim has co-designed the world's only electric komungo. Kim’s autobiography Komungo Tango, a 25 years journey of creative collaborations with master musicians around the world, was published in Seoul, S. Korea.During the three decades Kim has performed as soloist in her own compositions and improvisations at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Royal Festival Hall (London), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Venice Biennale, Expo Zaragoza and many significant new music festivals, jazz festivals, and universities throughout the USA, Europe, Canada, South America, Russia, Asia, New Zealand and Australia.


Max Pollak, is a 2011 Hoofer Award winner, 2011 Bessie Award nominee, 2010 Individual Artist Grantee of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and 2008 fellow in Choreography from the New York Foundation of the Arts. One of the most prestigious names on the international tap scene today, he is recognized worldwide for his superior musicianship and his highly individual style as the first person to merge authentic Afro-Cuban music and dance with American rhythm tap and body music to create RumbaTap. Originator of Cuba's first tap festival, he has been teaching and performing there since 1998, and has worked with Los Muсequitos de Matanzas, Cuba's top Rumba group, Chucho Valdйs, Lila Downs and jazz legends Ray Brown, Phil Woods, Paquito D'Rivera, Slide Hampton and Danilo Perez. He is also recognized for making European and South American classical music more accessible by playing with classical ensembles in prestigious venues like Vienna's Konzerthaus, Musikverein, Havana's Teatro Nacional and Teatro Amadeo Roldan. He has performed with members of the Vienna Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of St. Luke's as well as the Duluth Superior and Plano Symphony Orchestras, with the latter two as soloist in the Morton Gould Tap Dance Concerto.