Chamber concert «Voice of Nature»

   Three chapters of one story — grandeur, destruction and rebirth — told without a single spoken line. In the middle of Ho Chi Minh City a real forest is built on the concert stage, and you sit in front of it and listen to the music rising from inside.

   La Music brings its annual nature concert back together with Fantasy Trio, a chamber ensemble of piano, flute and clarinet. The programme follows three chapters — Grandeur, Destruction, Rebirth — from untouched landscapes, through violent change and loss, to the moment life starts coming back. No narration, no explanatory notes: only music speaks.

   At a glance

• — Fantasy Trio: San Tran (San Trần) on piano, Hoang Yen (Hoàng Yến) on flute, Quan Hoang (Quân Hoàng) on clarinet — three young musicians highly regarded by the profession, at home in classical and modern repertoire alike
• — La String Orchestra led by violinist Ho Nguyen (Hồ Nguyên), co-founder of La Music: the strings widen the colours of the trio into a whole space of sound, thin as mist in one passage and full-force in the next
• — The forest on stage is built by Silver Cloud Landscape from hundreds of real plants that surround the musicians
• — The same programme is played on two consecutive evenings, with each evening sold separately

   The evening suits people who already follow chamber music, anyone who wants a night pitched away from the city rhythm, and first-timers as well: there is no text to keep up with, and the story travels through sound and through what is happening on stage.

   La — A Different Way of Music was founded in December 2022 and, by the organiser's own account, has grown into one of the leading producers of chamber and orchestral concerts in Ho Chi Minh City. Voice of Nature is their annual title, and the forest is rebuilt on stage for every edition.

   The concert takes place in the hall of Nhạc viện Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh in the city centre — the poster calls the venue HCMC Conservatory, the ticket platform lists it as the conservatory hall, and both point to the same address. No age limit has been announced, but this is a formal concert evening of roughly ninety minutes in a quiet hall.

   If you have been looking for a stretch of quiet long enough to actually listen, these two October evenings are worth putting in the calendar — and if the first night does not fit, the second one is there.