Friday October 30, 2009
7:30 p.m.
Brechemin Auditorium, UW School of Music

As part of the Crossroads of Asian Music and Poetry conference, which will be held on the University of Washington campus October 30th and 31st, the East Asia Center is proud to present a concert, Asian Musical Crossroads, featuring musical performances from Chi Li (erhu, Chinese two-string fiddle), Hsin-chun Tasaw Lu (Burmese mandolin), Peter Marsh (Mongolian horse-head fiddle), and Helen Rees (dizi and xiao, Chinese flutes).

For thousands of years, China's borderlands have been the crossroads of Asian cultures. As the Chinese expanded from their original homeland in North China, they encountered myriad groups of mounted nomads, hunter-gatherers, upland farmers, and long-distance merchants. And at various times in Chinese history, parts of China were ruled by conquerors from Inner- and Southeast Asia. The results of these cultural encounters are evident everywhere in architecture, technology, religion, and the arts. Less physically obvious but just as important have been mutual influences in music and the literary arts. This trend of cross-fertilization continues and accelerates today with China's continual opening to the world and with the development of new international media and new travel opportunities. This concert will explore some of the musical results of this re-opening of physical and cultural borders, which has revitalized old forms with new content and influenced popular culture.

For more information on the concert and conference, contact Diane Atkinson (atkinsd@uw.edu, 206-543-6938).

Presented by the East Asia Center at the UW's Jackson School of International Studies and the UCLA Asia Institute. Co-sponsored by the China Studies Program, Southeast Asia Center and Ellison Center for Russia, East European and Central Asian Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies.