Chicago’s Chinese Fine Arts Society (CFAS) in partnership with the Chicago Public Library is pleased to announce Melodies of Love and Loss, a free concert to be held on Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 2:00 PM at the Harold Washington Library Center’s Cindy Pritzker Auditorium, 400 S. State Street.

Bringing together some of Chicago’s leading musicians, this special concert showcases music composed by both known and emerging Chinese composers. Curated by Yuan-Qing Yu, assistant concertmaster of Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the program is inspired by and is an aural accompaniment to the wonderful stories of Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li, the latest selection for Chicago’s citywide book club, One Book, One Chicago.

Throughout April, the Chicago Public Library and its program partners offer a variety of events celebrating the book and the people it portrays, including an appearance by author Yiyun Li on April 19th at the Harold Washington Library Center. One Book, One Chicago is presented by the Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Public Library Foundation, Allstate and BMO Harris. For more information and a full list of programs visit www.onebookonechicago.org.

Featured performers include pipa virtuoso Yang Wei, as well as Jessica Warren, flute; Mabel Kwan on piano; Elizandro Garcia-Montoya, clarinet; Dominic Johnson, viola; Mabel Kwan, piano; Aurelien Pederzoli, Jaime Gorgojo, violin; Anna Steinhoff, cello.

The program will include:

Dragon Boat: Traditional
Chou Wen Chung: Cursive for Flute and piano
Huang Ruo: Being for Clarinet and Viola
Tan Dun: C.A.G.E for piano
Lei Liang: Five Seasons for pipa quintet
Vivian Fung: Miniatures for Clarinet and String quartet
And, as part of our Migratory Journeys World Premiere series: Bin Li: My Hometown Far Away for Piano

About the Chinese Fine Arts Society: For 27 years, this professional, small, fully- independent arts organization has brought together people from diverse backgrounds over a common goal: to celebrate the beauty and majesty of traditional and contemporary Chinese music and art. CFAS is dedicated to promoting the appreciation of Chinese culture, enhancing cultural exchange and pursuing excellence in Chinese music, dance and visual arts.

Funding for these concerts are provided, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, City Arts Grants, and SMART Growth and the Arts Work Fund initiatives of the Chicago Community Trust and Affiliates.

About the book: Gold Boy, Emerald Girl includes nine expertly written short stories set in modern China. Through Yiyun Li’s unforgettable characters, we learn about a country and a people who are not so different from us. Li’s stories—whether about a young girl navigating life in the army or a group of widows who start a private investigation agency—offer a rich and varied portrait of China, and will resonate with Chicago’s readers. Discussions and events take place throughout April, including a conversation with Yiyun Li and Chicago author Achy Obejas at the Harold Washington Library Center on April 19. Visit your library and check out a copy of Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, take part in a discussion or attend any number of programs or performances. To learn more, inquire at your local library or visit www.onebookonechicago.org.

For further information about the Chinese Fine Arts Society or the above concerts, contact 312-369-3197 or [email protected].

Featuring performances by The Space/Movement Project, Rachel Damon/Synapse Arts & Erica Mott

MARCH 8-10, 2012, 8:00 P.M.
at the Dance Center at Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan.
MORE INFO/TICKETS.

Receiver is a shared program of premieres by three emerging Chicago voices, exhibiting the varying depths to which theatricality appears in dance. In Kiss Kiss Missiles, dancemakers’ collective The Space/Movement Project uses social dance tradition to assemble surging directional changes, fleeting partnerships and mismatched patterning. Choreographer Rachel Damon of Synapse Arts uses improvisation to challenge her collaborators in real time and invites the viewer to experience morphing body states as they unfold in Without Pause. The music of percussionist Frank Rosaly, performed live, heightens the impact of Damon’s intrepid work. Choreographer and performance-maker Erica Mott uses humor and surprise to explore polar opposites. Incorporating dance, object manipulation, and sculptural costuming, Mott’s Five Gaits, Four Walls, Fourteen Knots is a sweeping landscape of maverick abandon, aggressive territoriality, and lonely constriction.

Self Promotion for Performing Artists, a free presentation by arts consultants Peter McDowell and Mia Park, will take place on Saturday, March 24 from 3-4pm at the Chicago Cultural Center’s 5th Floor Garland Room, 78 E. Washington, Chicago, as part of the Creative Chicago Expo. Now in its 9th year, the Creative Chicago Expo is a chance for arts organizations and artists of all disciplines to connect, exchange information, and share best practices. In the past, more than 5,000 creative practitioners and 140 local and national vendors participated in dozens of consulting sessions and free workshops, and networked across Chicago’s diverse arts communities. For more information, see www.chicagoartistsresource.org

Self-Promotion for Performing Artists is a presentation designed to give composers and performing artists (musicians, actors, dancers) simple but powerful tools and strategies for marketing and publicising their careers, creations and performances.

Areas covered include:
• overview of web site options
• web site content basics
• creating promotional PDFs such as one-sheets
• writing a bio and a press release
• promoting live performances to critics, reviewers, bloggers, and fans
• getting events listed
• promoting a recording/CD on the web, to radio stations, and to critics/reviewers
• social media strategies

There will be time for networking and for a question and answer session. Participants are asked to bring any self-promotional materials that they have created.

Performing Arts Consultant Peter McDowell (PeterMcDowell.com), a former Program Director for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, has lived in New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago over the past 20 years and brings his wealth of knowledge of the performing arts scene in each of these cities to the workshop. He has built a solid career on high-level, strategic, creative, efficient and effective service to performing arts organizations and performing artists. He is also Co-Founder of PerformSites.com — a company that creates WordPress web sites for artists and arts organizations.

Mia Park (MiaPark.com) communicates the highest good as an actress, producer, musician and yoga instructor. Mia has seventeen years of experience performing and marketing in Chicago’s rock music scene and has produced dozens of music and theatrical shows. She’s led a successful acting career for twelve years and a yoga career for seven. With strong communication skills and sincere networking, Mia teaches that honesty, excitement and intuition are powerful marketing tools.

Peter McDowell and Mia Park will also share a booth in the vendor area at the Creative Chicago Expo for both Friday and Saturday, March 23 and 24 from 10am – 4pm.

Migratory Journeys World Premiere Concert
Featuring Civitas Ensemble with guests Yang Wei, YuQi Deng and others
Friday, March 16, 2012, 6:30 PM
Tickets $20 for non-members, $10 for members. Gala dinner to follow at the University Club of Chicago, 76 East Monroe Street, Chicago. Gala tickets start at $125. Honorary Event Chairman: Henry Fogel
Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago
www.artic.edu (concert)
www.chinesefinearts.org/mj (Gala)

Chicago’s Chinese Fine Arts Society (CFAS), in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the Echo Effect Season, is pleased to announce their March 16 Migratory Journeys World Premiere Concert which will feature the winning works from CFAS’s Third International Music Composition Competition where composers were invited to participate by creating original music inspired by the wandering, resettling, and emigration of Chinese diaspora population through the world. Works will be performed live by Civitas Ensemble with guests Yang Wei, YuQi Deng and others.

Drawing upon the submission of original work by emerging as well as seasoned composers, the CFAS International Music Composition Competition seeks inspires creativity and innovation in the global music community.

The Program (*winners indicated with asterisk) is as follows:
• Sojourner’s Song by Daniel Lo, World Premiere*
• A set of 3 piano solo pieces by Vivian Fung
• Limpid Eyes Image by Hao Liu, World Premiere*
• Yearning by Chen Yao, World Premiere*
• Moon Lullaby by Tonia Ko, World Premiere*
• Tibetan Tunes by Chen Yi

(Works above by Chen Yi and Vivan Fung are not part of the composition competition)

Musicians include: Yuan-Qing Yu (Violin, Viola); Kozue Funakoshi (Violin); Ken Olsen (Cello); Daniel Armstrong (Double Bass); Kuang-Hao Huang (Piano); Scott Hostetler (Oboe); Eugenia Moliner (Flute); Cynthia Yeh (Percussion); Eric Millstein (Percussion); YuQi Deng (Zheng); Hong-Da Chin (DiZi); and Wei Yang (Pipa)

The conductor will be Emanuele Andrizzi.

ALSO: Mark your calendars for:

Migratory Journeys Sunday Salon Concert: An All Chinese Music Concert dedicated to the memory of Barbara Tiao
(Slightly different program to be announced in a later press release)
Sunday, April 29, 2012, 3:00 PM, Free admission
Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall, 78 E. Washington, Chicago
www.chicagoculturalcenter.org

About the Chinese Fine Arts Society: For 27 years, this professional, small, fully- independent arts organization has brought together people from diverse backgrounds over a common goal: to celebrate the beauty and majesty of traditional and contemporary Chinese music and art. CFAS is dedicated to promoting the appreciation of Chinese culture, enhancing cultural exchange and pursuing excellence in Chinese music, dance and visual arts.

Funding for these concerts are provided, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, City Arts Grants, and SMART Growth and the Arts Work Fund initiatives of the Chicago Community Trust and Affiliates.

For further information about the Chinese Fine Arts Society or the Migratory Journeys Concerts, contact 312-369-3197 or [email protected]. Visit ChineseFineArts.org.

Music/Words (www.musicwordsnyc.com), an interdisciplinary series founded and curated by NYC- based pianist Inna Faliks (www.innafaliks.com), continues its fourth season on Friday, February 10, at 7:30pm with a performance at New York’s Gershwin Hotel featuring Faliks at the piano along with guest pianist Dimitri Dover and poet Tom Thompson. The varied program will include solo works of Haydn (Sonata in C minor)  Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet), Chopin (Scherzo # 2), Debussy (selected Preludes), and Liszt (transcriptions, etudes and the four-hand Symphonic Poem “Orpheus”). The Gershwin Hotel (www.gershwinhotel.com) is located at 7 E. 27^th street in New York. Tickets are $20 and are available at the door.

MUSIC/WORDS celebrates links between poetry and music by presenting collaborations between exciting solo performers and acclaimed contemporary poets in the form of a live recital/reading. Inna Faliks created the series in order to foster a chance for poets and musicians to work together and inspire each other, as well as to allow different audiences to come together for these musical-literary events. New published and unpublished works are read alongside performances of music old and new and connected by content, intuition, and inspiration. According to Faliks, “I pair performers together based on their personalities and styles, and encourage them to choose the poems and music in varied ways that are strongly and intuitively connected.” In this performance, Mr. Thompson will tailor his readings to Mr. Dover’s and Ms. Faliks’ musical selections, finding poems from his own works that connect with the music. Music/Words will be featured in regular live broadcasts throughout the month of April 2013 on WFMT Radio in Chicago.

Tom Thompson is the author of Live Feed and The Pitch, both published by Alice James Books. His poems and reviews have appeared in various print and digital journals including Boston Review, Post Road, and on the website From the Fishouse (www.fishousepoems.org). He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.

Pianist Dimitri Dover recently performed the inaugural solo recital at the Cronyn Center Space (London, Ontario), collaborative recitals at Weill Recital Hall in New York, as well as concerts with North Shore Pro Musica, Composers Concordance, Rosetta Trio, and Arcturus Chamber Ensemble. Mr. Dover has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Aspen Summer Music Festival, where he performed regularly as Orchestra Pianist in the Aspen Festival Orchestra and Aspen Chamber Orchestra under renowned conductors including David Zinman and James Conlon.

Called “adventurous” and “passionate” by The New Yorker and “poetic” by Time Out New York, Ukrainian-born, New York City based pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most passionately committed, exciting and poetic artists of her generation. After her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she has performed on many of the world’s great stages, with numerous orchestras, in solo appearances, and with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin and Keith Lockhart. Critics praise her “courage to take risks, expressive intensity and technical perfection” (General Anzeiger, Bonn), “poetry and panoramic vision” (Washington Post), and “riveting passion, playfulness” (Baltimore Sun). Her CD on MSR Classics, “Sound of Verse”, was released in 2009.