“Most Chinese have played ping pong or have at the very least watched ping pong games,” writes Xiong Yuqing in Monday’s (10/26) Global Times (China). “But to use a ping pong to play music—and not a short piece of only a few minutes but a whole concerto, which means the sound of ping pong would have to cooperate with a whole orchestra—would certainly require a stretch of the imagination. And that is exactly what [Andy Akiho’s] Ping Pong Match—Unique Melody did for Beijing Music Festival (BMF) at the Poly Theatre on Thursday night when it gathered two Olympic ping pong players on stage to create music, with soloists and an orchestra…. The two players changed their tools to hit the ball … Besides the normal paddles, they also used tambourines and even a tulip glass…. During the second movement, [Ariel] Hsing even smashed balls directly into the audience…. Violin soloist Elizabeth Zeltser presented the theme melody … while percussion soloist David Cossin seemed to be in a musical call and response with the ping pong sounds…. Accompanied by the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the whole piece ended up with Cossin and Zeltser suddenly pouring about several hundred ping pong balls on the table, the sound earning a round of applause.”
Posted October 27, 2015
