JULY / AUG. BIMONTHLY 2009 DT72 ｜發｜現｜臺｜北｜ Taipei FUN Music Love and Fireworks in the Air for Chinese Valentine’s Day 2009 Taipei Dadaocheng Fireworks Festival 2009 Mid-summer Jazz Promenade Taipei International Jazz Festival A Symphony Crossing Forty Years, a Gift in Mid-Summer Days 2009 Taipei Music Festival EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION Taipei FUN Music ! he height of the Taipei summer, July and August, is a time of great zest for the city's Tpeople. The sounds of music float through the air in a great jamboree of creativity and freedom. We invite all of our friends from faraway lands to come and join the party, and enjoy the passionately warm and sultry ambiance of Taipei in the summertime. The theme for this issue is, appropriately enough, Taipei FUN Music. We jump into the kaleidoscope of music activities, discovering the best on tap to launch you on the journey of summer sensual exploration in depth. There's romance in the offing, along with a fine walking tour of the old district of Dadaocheng – hand-in-hand with the apple of your eye – with the 2009 Dadaocheng Fireworks Festival. And there's more sensory stimulations, with many a music tryst in the parks, with the 2009 Taipei International Jazz Festival, 2009 Taipei International Choral Festival, 2009 Taipei Music Festival, and other grand gatherings of talent in Taiwan and from around the world. For a slight change of pace and mood, we then move on to a review of premium local restaurants that serve up the finest of live music with delicious foods. The venues are eclectic and wide-ranging, and you'll be able to find stage acts in pretty much any genre you want. Staying with the food theme but sweetening things up, we then report on the city's endless array of summertime ice treats, a favorite way to cool down when temperatures spike. We've made an appointment with you for a leisurely day-tour through a neighborhood that cultivates mind and soul; meet us over in The Many Fragrances of the Wen Luo Ding Book, Coffee, and Music Trip feature. Then it's off to our report on the 2009 Taipei Water Festival for some wild summer fun. In July, the 2009 Taipei Hotel Festival hits the stage, and we bring you a suitcase full of information on the many preferential deals on hotels and other travel-package goodies you can treat yourself on a trip of culture and sightseeing fun. After this, it's off we go on an expedition along the new MRT Neihu Line to find out things you can now so conveniently do in that part of the metropolis. One of the biggest events ever be hosted here in Taipei is the 2009 Taipei Deaflympics in September, the largest sporting event ever to be staged in Taiwan, and we report on the four big events that will make up this gala's warm-up exercise, the “Taipei Deaflympics Month of the Arts,”with an August launch. We wrap up with two features on important local personalities on the music scene – Matthew Lien, renowned for his eco-passionate recordings, and Xiao Qing-yang, receiver of three Grammy nominations for recording-package design in recent years. In this issue, all you need to know about the local world of music, and about the rest of your best high-summer options for fun and freedom, is at your fingertips. Yes, Taipei the Music City, awaits you this summer with toes tapping and oodles of Taipei FUN Music! 06 16 FEATURE ARCHITECTURE 04 A Ramble through Taipei, a Music City 16 Performance Spaces that Echo with Music 06 Love and Fireworks in the Air for Chinese 16 Taipei Arena – A Colossus Stage Meant for the Valentine’s Day – 2009 Taipei Dadaocheng Giants of the Music Biz Fireworks Festival 17 National Concert Hall – Classical Pedigree, International Caliber 08 2009 Mid-summer Jazz Promenade 18 Let the Notes of Vibrant Musicality Dance through Taipei International Jazz Festival the Outdoors – The Daan Park Amphitheater and 10 A Grand Gathering of International Choral Talent Huashan 1914. Creative Park 2009 Taipei International Choral Festival 12 A Symphony Crossing Forty Years, a Gift in Mid- Summer Days – 2009 Taipei Music Festival 32 52 LIVING IN TAIPEI ARTS 32 Power in Me! 21st Summer Deaflympics 52 Artistic Strength that Never Wavers – 2009 Taipei in Taipei 2009 Arts Festival 36 2009 Taipei Hotel Festival – The City’s Fine 54 Children’s Dreams Coming True – 2009 Taipei Inns Take the Midsummer Stage! Children’s Arts Festival 40 All Aboard the MRT! Connect Neihu to the 56 The Wall – Mecca for Taiwan’s Underground Brand New World Music Scene 42 Urban Aqua Amusement Park The 2009 Taipei Water Festival 44 A Trip through the Book, Coffee, and Music Fragrances of Wen Luo Ding 48 Matthew Lien : Promoter of Pristine and Primal Taiwan Music 50 Foreigners’ Reflections on Taipei 20 24 MARKETPLACE FOOD 20 An Arts and Culture Marketplace Fusing Music, 24 For a Yummy Dose of Colorful Creativity, Eat Fine Food, and Culture – Shida Night Market Taipei’s Summertime Ice Treats! 28 In Taipei, Music in All Styles Is Yours for the Asking 58 62 CREATIVE TAIPEI PRACTICAL INFORMATION 58 A Romantic Chinese Valentine’s at MOCA 62 July-August Arts Exhibition Calendar Taipei – "MATCH Index" Lovebirds KUSO 65 How You Get from Taiwan Taoyuan International Modeling Competition Airport to Taipei 60 Grammy Glory Comes to a Home-grown Talent 66 Shida Night Market Map / Wen Luo Ding Map / Recording Package Designer Xiao Qing-yang Taipei Water Festival Map & Information FEATURE 4 Discover Taipei Discover Taipei 5 o call Taipei a“city of music”is no exaggeration. Even before you've fully wiped away the sleep Tfrom your eyes, Good Morning, Taipei (早安，臺北) is pouring forth from Taipei Broadcasting Station on the radio. In the afternoon, there are many art and culture spaces, with pop-singer signing records at record stores in youth-packed Ximending, the entertainers playing their trade in parks, commercial circles, and myriad other spots, and the historic sites housing cafes where fine music is mixed in with your premium coffee. As night falls, the music restaurants near National Taiwan University rouse themselves to life, as do the many lounge bars, the National Concert Hall, Taipei Arena, Metropolitan Hall, and countless other performance venues. If you're just setting off on your exploration of the Taipei melody, let's head off together on a feast of performance venues that rivals the best of the West. It is apropos to start with the genre of the longest pedigree, classical music, and we'll first explore the classical expressions in historical locations. Zhongshan Hall (中山堂) was built during the Japanese colonial period and, in recent years, has been declared a heritage site, refurbished, and given new life as a“small is beautiful”music concert venue. Among other rescued heritage sites and important historical architecture are the Red House (西門紅樓) in nearby Ximending and the Huashan 1914. Creative Park (華山創意文化園區), which has facilities for outdoor shows. Other key venues for concerts, classical and any other genre in fact, are the auditorium at Daan Park (大安 森林公園音樂臺), the squares before the city's various social education institutions, neighborhood parks, and even MRT stations with their agreeable street-artist performances. Wherever you and the rest of this city's people flow, musical notes float along with you. The Metropolitan Hall (城市舞臺) comes under the auspices of the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs’Taipei Cultural Center (臺北市立社教館). The idea behind the facility is to provide another sophisticated upscale venue option for musical performances. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and the National Concert Hall at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall are premier locations for the staging of mid-and large- scale performances. The Taipei International Convention Center and Taipei Arena are frequent choices for extremely large-scale happenings, whether classical, crossover, or pop concerts. So whether a concert promoter or an avid concert-goer, your particular ensemble of needs can be accommodated, whatever the combination. The city is also pouring resources into the establishment of a whole slate of spanking-new cultural performance complexes. These projects include the Taipei City Museum (臺北城市博物館) near Zhongshan Stadium, the Taipei Performing Arts Center (臺北藝術中心) in Shilin, the Northern Taiwan Pop Musice Center in Nangang (北部流行音樂中心), and the Songshan Tobacco Factory Culture Park (松山菸廠文化園區). When these come on-line, a music and arts environment that is already flourishing will become a veritable garden of culture Eden, and the discerning traveler from overseas will be the lucky benefactor, spoiled for choice. The music performed here in Taipei is the best found in the land. Symphonies, chamber music, pop, jazz, and all else as well; each year the number, quality, and variety of the events rivals those found in other metropolis in Asia. The best in the land, and the best from other lands - illustrious artworks and artists such as the Three Tenors, Sarah Brightman, Phantom of the Opera, Cats - is brought in, leaving music gourmets sated with choice. Taking in concerts, listening to albums, radios on everywhere, stores and shops pumping in hits, classical, pop, avant-garde, folk. Here in this place, life is filled with music, and Taipei Music City is a place we never feel lonely. 4 Discover Taipei Discover Taipei 5 FEATURE Love and Fireworks in the Air for Chinese Valentine's Day 2009 Taipei Dadaocheng Fireworks Festival daytime, you can stroll along old Dihua Street and take in many places of historical interest, especially the famed religious and cultural hub of the neighborhood, ach year, the Taipei Dadaocheng Fireworks Festival the old Xiahai City God Temple (霞海城隍廟).