Les Salonières: When Chaminade Encounters Tao YuanmingLe French May

Salonières were women who served as hostesses and led the conversations in salons - gatherings of artists, writers, musicians and thinkers. The music in salons was mainly written as commissions or dedications, or with the aim of being premièred. Salonières introduced their audiences to new ideas and ways of life through happenings at salons.

Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) was a French composer who dedicated her early life to music, but turned to hospital service in her later years. Most of her music was performed in salons.

The Chinese poet Tao Yuanming (365-427) was famous for his reclusive, pastoral life of drinking and farming. Yet his direct, free-floating style of poetry was an escape from, and a reaction against, the mainstream of thinking in his time, and it led him to withdraw from civil service after he began his poetic life.

In this programme showcasing the piano and vocal music of Chaminade, and inspired by Tao Yuanming, soprano Florence Cheng and pianist Cynthia Chan, together with dancers Chi-yu Hua and David Leung, will present a cross-disciplinary arts performance depicting nature, people and life, in the hope of prompting thoughts about living a poetic life and pursuing an ideal spiritual mind.

* HUA Chi-yu and Cynthia CHAN appear by courtesy of the Hong Kong Dance Company