Composer still tearing down walls

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Tan Dun, the Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer, uses water-filled bottles, water basins and other implements to create unique percussive sounds. He's in town for a pair of shows this weekend. Tan Dun 8 p.m. today, 4 p.m. Sunday Blaisdell Concert Hall $15-$57 792-2000

One of the most celebrated and successful composer/conductors of modern classical music, Tan has been called to task by his peers and the genre's cognoscenti for being a bit too, uh, uncontrollable when it comes to his noted fondness for tearing down long-standing musical boundaries.

A critique in the London newspaper the Independent called Tan's compositional work "the rampant plagiarism of a cultural kleptomaniac let loose among the World Music racks at his local record store." Referencing the Independent's rather harsh criticism, a review of Tan's recent work in the Boston Globe earlier this year took both sides: "One can listen to Tan's music and hear pretentiousness, inflation, emptiness, repetition and kitsch alongside imagination, assimilation, originality and sounds processed and arranged through an unusually informed and discriminating musical ear."

The reality, of course, is that Tan Dun has long taken pleasure in pushing the lapel buttons of his harshest critics with his self-described outrageousness. Pulling musical influences from eastern and western culture, and mixing contemporary and traditional music like a blissed-out DJ blending disparate sonic elements on a two-turntable setup? That's just classic Tan, man.

The Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer will conduct a couple of senses-working-overtime Honolulu Symphony Orchestra performances of his "Crouching Tiger Concerto" and "Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra" this weekend for what will likely wind up as sold-out audiences.

The "Crouching Tiger Concerto," arrives with the prestigious pedigree of being based on Tan's 2000 Academy Award-winning score for Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and a none-too-subtle multimedia twist.

A concerto in six movements, each orchestral movement will be accompanied by film footage edited by Lee and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" producer James Schamus specifically for Tan's concerto. Newly shot digital video of New York CIty interspersed with computer-created images of ancient and contemporary Beijing architecture allude to the elements of old and new, East and West in Tan's musical palette.

For his "Concerto for Water Percussion," Tan uses water-filled bottles, tubes, drums, gongs, bells and basins, and other simple implements to conjure unique percussive sounds. Other percussive accents are created by using classical instruments to manipulate water.

The concerto is typically punctuated visually by video projections, a variety of camera angles of Tan conducting, and transparent water basins being vigorously agitated front stage.

It won't be quite like an evening with Gallagher, but first-row ticket holders might want to be prepared for a few stray droplets.