Amazing Performance
author: Arturo
Great music !!! If you like and collect world folk music than this CD is for you. Jeremy Moyer does an amazing performance of Taiwanese folk tunes.
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accomplished readings of trad folk tunes
author: Carlos Alden host, "The Nacho Celtic Hour"
This CD is a collection of Chinese folk tunes. Having lived in China, and playing the erhu, I have a keen ear towards this music already. Jeremy has done an excellent job of creating a good selection of offerings for the Western ear.
Having studied with a few erhu masters, I can hear that he is not an expert, but that doesn't matter. As a folk musician myself, I recognize that technique is often the least important aspect of storytelling in music. Another reviewer noted the odd similarities between a few tunes on this CD and some French Canadian fiddle tunes. I heard this as well, and it's to his credit that Jeremy is able to grasp the musical essence of the tunes and present us with something that is intelligible. (I have also noted the similarities between Irish traditional music and Chinese folk tunes as well. If you like this idea, find and listen to The Chieftains in China CD.)
This CD will get play on my folk/Celtic weekly radio program, as well as be in my CD player. Great work.
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dude
author: ashley
This cd is sooooo cool, the best cd i have heard in months upon months. I love this stuff.
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Wisdom of the ancient east. Waterloo's Jeremy Moyer explores centuries-old musi
author: Harrie Currie, The Record, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada 6/28/97
Understanding Chinese culture and language - whether Mandarin or Cantonese - would be beyond most of us born into the nations of the Western world. All the more remarkable then, that a young Waterloo man has not only learned to speak fluent Mandarin during his three-year sojourn in China, but also has learned to play several traditional Chinese musical instruments to a standard where he has made a new CD of his accomplishments....
The subtlety of the music and the playing requires several listenings before one can adjust to the gentle nature of the sounds, indeed, to the philosophy which breathes life into those sounds. There is a delicacy here which makes our frenetic lifestyles seem almost frivolous, and the CD must be listened to with no distracting background noises, no interrupting telephones, and with no time constraints, for there must be contemplation during and after the listening session.
At first there seems a repetition of sound which, to Western ears, seems almost monotonous, but this gives way to the discernment of the fragile differences in phrase, mood, and style. There is an eerie echo of early French Canadian fiddle music on some tracks - 1 and 10 in particular - but speculation on common ancestry would be fruitless.
What emerges here is the culmination of an achievement which few of us could even contemplate, let alone accomplish. Moyer is to be congratulated.
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