news & articles
“East
Meets West in Where Elephants Weep”
By Andrea Shea, All Things Considered, NPR, April 29,
2007
“From
the Mekong to the Merrimack”
By Catherine Foster, Boston Globe, Sunday, April 22,
2007
“Where Artists Meet: Lowell Births Cambodia’s First Opera”
By Nancy Tuttle, Lowell Sun, April 19, 2007
“Past and Present Meet in Where Elephants Weep”
By Kathleen Pierce; Lowell Sun, April 2, 2007
"Cambodia's first rock opera is
a post-Khmer Rouge 'Rent'-inspired musical"
By Ker Munthit, Associated Press, March 18, 2007
"East
meets West in Where Elephants Weep opera"
By Charles McDermid; Phnom Penh Post, Dec 1-14, 2006 Edition
"Betwixt
Cambodia and the US: An Operatic Tale"
By Suzy Khimm; The Cambodia Daily; Wednesday, December 6, 2006
"If
Cambodia Can Learn to Sing Again"
By Patricia Cohen, New York Times, Sunday, December 18, 2005,
Arts Section.
“For seven years now, the two [CLA founder Arn Chorn-Pond and CLA
Founding Board Chair John Burt] have been working to record and teach
Cambodia’s arts, in part by finding performers and putting them
to work as mentors for a new generation. So far they have tracked down
20 master musicians in 10 provinces, who are working with 300 students.
A Cambodian Buena Vista Social Club.
Yet the men quickly realized that simply preserving the ancient arts wasn't
enough, that without creating original work, the music would be like a
pinned butterfly. They needed to provide new commissions, inspire new
young artists...
So Mr. Burt, who is a producer as well as a philanthropist, came up with
the idea of commissioning a new kind of opera that would shift the familiar
focus from the Killing Fields and embody their project; it would integrate
Cambodian and American, modern and traditional music, instruments and
styles. He chose opera because it is one of the most popular forms of
musical theater in Cambodia."
To read more about the founding of Cambodian Living Arts and the development
of Where Elephants Weep, the first Cambodian-American opera, please click
here.
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