"Music on the Edge Presents Devon Osamu Tipp: New Music for Shakuhachi and Electroacoustic Sound," October 23 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's Department of Music presents "Music on the Edge Presents Devon Osamu Tipp: New Music for Shakuhachi and Electroacoustic Sound" on October 23.

Music on the Edge presents Pitt PhD candidate Devon Osamu Tipp performing new music by Pitt graduate composers for shakuhachi and electroacoustic elements. The program will include works by Brian Riordan, Ryan McMasters, Mark Micchelli, Jason Belcher, Emmanuel Berrido, Ramin Akhavijou, and Tipp.

Pittsburgh based composer/performer Devon Osamu Tipp creates unorthodox musical environments from ostensibly incompatible realms. A PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, Tipp’s music draws influence from his Japanese and Eastern European roots, his experiences as a jeweler and painter, and his studies of gagaku and hogaku in Japan and the US. His compositions focus on rhythmic and timbral transmutation of cyclical materials, ranging from the orchestral, to string basses prepared with honey stirrers, to concerti for traditional Japanese instruments. He received his BMus from Montclair State University, where he studied composition and microtonal music with Dean Drummond, and shakuhachi with Elizabeth Brown. His music has been performed by microtonal specialists Kjell Tore Innervik, Veli Kujala and Tolgahan Çogulu. He has also worked with Rarescale, the Thin Edge New Music Collective, the TAK Ensemble, and members of Avanti! Chamber Orchestra. His compositions have been featured at the Soundscape Festival, Bowdoin Festival, Beyond 2020: Microtonal Music Festival, and the 2015 Tokyo International Double Reed Society Conference.

The event will be broadcast live online for the general public, though limited in-person seating is available in Bellefield Hall for COVID-safety-compliant university students, faculty, and staff. The event starts at 7:30 pm and registration is required.

Japanese guitarist MIYAVI at Thunderbird Cafe, October 22.

Japanese guitarist MIYAVI will play the Thunderbird Cafe on October 22.

Takamasa Ishihara (石原 崇雅), better known by his stage name Miyavi (雅), is a Japanese singer-songwriter, guitarist, record producer and actor. He is known for his finger-slapping style of playing a guitar. He has been active since 1999, first as guitarist for the now defunct visual kei rock band Dué le Quartz and then as a solo artist starting in 2002. In 2007, he became a member of the rock supergroup Skin and in 2009 founded his own company, J-Glam. He toured worldwide several times, with over 250 shows in 30 countries as of 2015.

Tickets for the 18+ show are available online from $30 (plus the multitude of fees); doors open at 7 pm, show starts at 8 pm. The Thunderbird Cafe & Music Hall is located at 4023 Butler St. in Lawrenceville (map).

"Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japanese Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945," November 15 at Pitt.

via @seijishirane

The University of Pittsburgh will host Dr. Seiji Shirane and his talk "Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japanese Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945" on November 15, part of the center's Asia Now Fall Lecture Series.

This talk examines how Japanese colonizers and Taiwanese subjects transformed colonial Taiwan—the sub-tropical island Japan acquired from China in 1895—into a staging ground for imperial expansion across the East and South China seas. Taking advantage of Taiwan's proximity and cultural affinities with South China and Southeast Asia, Japanese colonial leaders innovated new strategies to compete with the Chinese and Western powers for regional hegemony. They mobilized Taiwanese overseas as economic and cultural brokers in the pre-war period (1895–1937) and as military personnel during the Asia-Pacific wars (1937–45). Studying the intricate ties between colonial governance and international relations helps us transcend the conventional emphasis on two-way relations between Japan's home islands and each of its colonies. A regional approach to Taiwan allows us to recover transnational networks often neglected due to divisions in area studies. Japanese imperialism was a contested process among not only state agencies but also mobile colonial subjects whose interests did not easily map on to national, local, or ethnic categories. The overseas Taiwanese in particular challenge prevailing assumptions of imperial hierarchies. Gradations of power and categories of identity—colonizer and colonized—were much more fluid outside Taiwan's territorial borders.

It runs from 4:30 to 5:45 pm in 211 Lawrence Hall, and is free and open to members of the Pitt community who abide by the university's health guidelines.

Charles Yu with Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures, October 18.

Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures will present an online discussion with author Charles Yu on October 18 as part of its Ten Evenings series.

The author of four books and numerous television scripts, Charles Yu won the 2020 National Book Award for Interior Chinatown, an ambitious satire about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping roles we are forced to play. Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

Tickets for the 7:30 pm event are available online for $10 to $15. It's a virtual event, and those who purchase tickets can watch it anytime for one week.

"Belonging Otherwise: Chinese Undergraduate Students at South Korean Universities," November 1 at Pitt.

via moreweeping

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will present Dr. Jiyeon Kang and her talk "Belonging Otherwise: Chinese Undergraduate Students at South Korean Universities" on November 1, part of the center's Asian Now Fall Lecture Series.

Following the South Korean government’s drive in the 1990s for globalization and deregulation of higher education, Korean universities aggressively recruited Chinese students as both symbolic and economic resources. The number of Chinese students studying at Korean universities consequently increased 57-fold between 2000 and 2019 (from 1,200 to 68,537). This presentation will share the findings from interviews with some of these Chinese students, who chose South Korea with academic and cultural aspirations but often found that neither Korean students nor the university itself welcomed them into classes or communities. As a result, Chinese students have not adapted to Korean university in the ways imagined by the normative framework, but instead make their study-abroad experience livable by constituting material, technological, and imagined modalities of belonging. These modalities of “belonging otherwise” reveal South Korea as a node of commercialized, non-elite, inter-Asian student mobility, and illuminate Chinese students’ strategies in this new regime of study abroad.

It runs from 4:30 to 5:45 pm in 211 Lawrence Hall, and is free and open to members of the Pitt community who abide by the university's health guidelines.

"Digging Cambodian Rock: Global Media Archaeologies of Popular Music," October 27 at Pitt.

via KUNR, story by NPR.

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will present David Novak and his talk "Digging Cambodian Rock: Global Media Archaeologies of Popular Music" on October 27, part of its Asia Now Fall Lecture Series.

Thinking toward a media archaeology of global popular music, this presentation will trace the contemporary circulation of “golden era” 1960s and 1970s "Cambodian Rock." The lecture seeks to contextualize and historicize revivals of pre-Khmer Rouge pop recordings through the mediated movements, dubs, and remixes of cassette tapes among North American independent labels and the activities of online archivists and heritage centers in present-day Cambodia, which helped to generate the documentary film Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, the play Cambodian Rock Band, and the Los Angeles based group Dengue Fever. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with contemporary preservationists and reissue labels in Cambodia, California, Oregon, and Massachusetts, the lecture considers the role of music in memories of genocide and war, the importance of physical materials in the global recognition of Southeast Asian history, and the ethical politics of media access in the transition to a digital archive.

It runs from 4:30 to 5:45 pm in 211 Lawrence Hall, and is free and open to members of the Pitt community who abide by the university's health guidelines.

Virtual Book Club: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, online on October 20 with Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh will discuss Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi in its next Virtual Book Club on October 20.

Join a lively discussion with fellow book lovers via Zoom to discuss Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Register below to receive the Zoom link for the discussion.

Set in an old, very unique Tokyo coffee shop, customers take turns sitting in the chair that allows a person to travel back in time for only as long as it takes a single cup of coffee to cool. The customers embark on emotional journeys reconnecting with loved ones and making up for past regrets.

Copies of the book are available through Hoopla, OverDrive and the Catalog.

The book club will meet from 2:00 to 3:00 pm on Zoom.

Asian grocery chain not coming to Hill District space after all.

The City of Pittsburgh announced today that Salem's Market has been selected to open in the Hill District space formerly occupied by Shop n' Save. In the running as a finalist was Fresh International Market, a small chain of large Asian groceries that got its start in Michigan in 2012. Its proposal was, admittedly, much weaker than the other three finalists, and the Hill Community Development Corporation notes it was submitted after the deadline. But, while only 4.2% of respondents ranked it as their top choice, it was voted the top second choice should the first choice not be chosen, though the numbers used were not clear.

OCA Pittsburgh Free Medical and Dental Clinic, October 18.

The Organization of Chinese Americans Pittsburgh Chapter is hosting its annual Free Medical and Dental Clinic, with Chinese-language support, on October 18 at Montefiore Hospital in Oakland (map). The clinic takes place from 6:00 to 10:00 pm on the hospital's 9th floor. Registration is strongly encouraged and can be completed by calling the numbers on the flyer: either Tong-change Lee at 724-309-5942, or Ru Tong at 412-403-4166.

Wong Kar-Wai film series coming to Row House Cinema in November.

The Row House Cinema in Lawrenceville will present a series of films by legendary Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai, featuring six movies restored in 4K. The lineup includes Happy Together (春光乍洩), Chungking Express ( 重慶森林), and In the Mood For Love (花樣年華) from November 5 through 11, a one-night screening of Fallen Angels (墮落天使) on November 5, a one-night-only screening of As Tears Go By (旺角卡門) on November 7, and a one-night-only screening of Days of Being Wild (阿飛正) on November 10.. Tickets are now available online.

The single-screen theater is located at 4115 Butler Street in Lawrenceville (map).