{"id":12981,"date":"2019-05-23T12:08:14","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T19:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=12981"},"modified":"2019-05-23T13:29:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T20:29:46","slug":"video-pick-of-the-week-meng-su-plays-sergio-assads-sun-wukongs-toccata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/video-pick-of-the-week-meng-su-plays-sergio-assads-sun-wukongs-toccata\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Pick of the Week: Meng Su Plays S\u00e9rgio Assad’s ‘Sun Wukong’s Toccata’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a fantastic video from the the good people at GuitarCoop<\/a> in Brazil, shot two years ago, but just released to YouYube in February 2019. The piece is a 2016 composition by S\u00e9rgio Assad<\/a> called Sun Wukong’s Toccata<\/em>, inspired by the Monkey King character from an ancient Chinese novel called Journey to the West.<\/em> Assad dedicated the piece to Chinese guitarist Meng Su<\/a>, known both as an extraordinary solo artist and as one-half of the Beijing Guitar Duo. In her notes accompanying the music, which was published by Doberman-Yppan<\/a>, Meng Su writes:<\/p>\n

“Sun Wukong is a superhero, he masters many special weapons, and is capable of 72 transformations into any person or object. On top of that, he has this charming, mischievous, kind and cool personality. He is every child\u2019s hero in China and certainly in other cultures: He is the original of Goku, the main character of Japanese manga book Dragonball.<\/em> I still remember when I was a kid, I would practice the guitar hard for many hours so my mom would reward me with the latest issue of the Dragonball<\/em> manga book.<\/p>\n

“Over the years of playing the guitar, I have always been amazed by its beauty, its colors, and the infinite possibilities of the instrument\u2014the guitar is capable of playing so many different styles of music from all over the world! In this way, I find the guitar similar to the Monkey King; it can do 72 transformations, too! And I\u2019m so happy and honored that another childhood hero of mine\u2014S\u00e9rgio Assad\u2014would write a piece about the Monkey King on the guitar!”<\/p>\n

It’s a wonderful multi-layered work, with many different sections, a blend of modern sonorities and Chinese colors (Oriental scales, etc.); at once virtuosic, but also with moments of beautiful simplicity. This video represents the first recording of the work; no doubt there will be others, as more guitarists strive to unlock its magical properties. (You can also purchase the music through Strings By Mail<\/a> and other outlets.)\u00a0 \u2014Blair Jackson<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a fantastic video from the the good people at GuitarCoop in Brazil, shot two years ago, but just released to YouYube in February 2019. The piece is a 2016 composition by S\u00e9rgio Assad called Sun Wukong’s Toccata, inspired by the Monkey King character from an ancient Chinese novel called Journey to the West. Assad dedicated the piece to Chinese guitarist Meng Su, known both as an extraordinary solo artist and as one-half of the Beijing Guitar Duo. In her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":12988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-watch","post_format-post-format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Meng-Su-e1558638143499.jpg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}