1 . How to Organize a Music Festival

You love music and you always have. You want to carry out a music festival designed to attract music fans of all ages. Follow the steps and you’ll organize a successful one.

◆Start by making a list of the local bands and artists that you like. You’ve taken this job because you love music, so put your taste to work for you. If you like these musicians, many of the local people will also like them.     1    . You need to have many kinds of music for all age groups.

◆Find a great location that has much open space for outdoor festivals. You need to build a stage so the musicians can be seen from distances.     2    . Not all towns need such license but it is a good idea to check before you start building. For an indoor location, you need to find a theater that is willing to give you enough space.     3    .

◆Hire sound engineers to give the musicians all the help they need.     4    . You can’t expect the musicians to handle these problems because they are playing. Your sound and engineering experts will allow your stars to keep the music playing.

◆    5    . If you are planning your festival for families, the last thing you want is a beer-swilling crowd starting a huge fight. Security people need to be present to make sure that nobody gets the idea that they want to start any kind of ruckus (骚乱).

A．You need to find security people.

B．We can find enough songs to get a lot of money.

C．Bigger sports stadiums will be perfect as well.

D．But remember, you are trying to attract fans of all ages.

E．People should have practiced many different songs.

F．You can find a location by going to the local government and asking for permission.

G．The last thing you want is that a group is on the stage but the speakers don’t work.

3 . Some of the world’s most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.

Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.

It’s Jason Moran’s job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center’s artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.

“Jazz seems like it’s not really a part of the American appetite,” Moran tells National Public Radio’s reporter Neal Conan. “What I’m hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It’s actually color, and it’s actually digital.”

Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. “The music can’t be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,” says Moran.

Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller’s music for a dance party, “Just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,” says Moran. “For me, it’s the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,” says Moran, “so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.”

1. Why did UNESCO set April 30 as International Jazz Day?

A．To remember the birth of jazz.

B．To protect cultural diversity.

C．To encourage people to study music.

D．To recognize the value of jazz.

2. What does the underlined word “that” in paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Jazz becoming more accessible.

B．The production of jazz growing faster.

C．Jazz being less popular with the young.

D．The jazz audience becoming larger.

3. What can we infer about Moran’s opinion on jazz?

A．It will disappear gradually.

B．It remains black and white.

C．It should keep up with the times.

D．It changes every 50 years.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Exploring the Future of Jazz.

B．The Rise and Fall of Jazz.

C．The Story of a Jazz Musician.

D．Celebrating the Jazz Day.

5 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

The Chinese folk dance is a microcosm (缩影) of the country’s rich culture. The peacock dance is a     1     (tradition) folk dance of the Dai minority.

The Dai people are known for their dancing and singing skills. It’s said that more     2    a thousand years ago, the Dai minority’s head learned to dance through     3     (copy) the elegant gestures of the peacock. Afterwards, the dance     4     (promote) by later generations and spread widely. In     5    mind of the Dai people, the peacock is a symbol of happiness.

The dance movements are usually performed in a fixed order. The dance starts with a peacock flying out from     6     (it) nest and looking around cautiously. It     7     (wander) around the wild searching for food. Having had its fill, the peacock then goes to the river bank to bathe and play in the water. After that, it shakes the water drops off and combs its feathers. When     8     (compete) with other peacocks, it displays its beautiful tail to its rivals and its beloved. At the end of the dance, the peacock spreads out its wings and flies joyfully into the sky.

    9     (show) a lively peacock, dancers must use a range of hand movements and eye expressions. Their knees must be very flexible,     10    is a feature of the Dai dance.

7 . Aesha Ash is a ballet dancer who began The Swan Dreams Project in 2011. It is a program designed to bring ballet to girls of color in her community. Aesha Ash is one of the few women of color to ever grace the stages of the School of American Ballet in New York City. She wants to expose her community to more positive images of women of color through the use of ballet. She wants to show the world that beauty and grace are not defined by status or race.

Aesha grew up in the inner city of Rochester, New York, where crime, gun violence and poverty were among the biggest threats to the community. For her, that’s normal. That’s just life in the neighborhood, but what she remembers most is the dance studio. She started dancing at the age of five. A teacher mentioned to her mother that she had some promise in ballet, and that it would be difficult for her, as a woman of color, to enter the ballet world. But the hardship she faced was the very thing that pushed her to pursue a career in ballet.

And there’s so much negative stereotypes (刻板印象) and misunderstanding of who they are in the media. Through the use of imagery and her career as a ballet dancer, she challenges stereotypes that exist for women of color, particularly those from inner-city communities.

“It’s important that our girls see that side of themselves because for many kids it’s hard to be what you can’t see. I hadn’t seen a black ballet dancer before I decided that was what I wanted to be. It was really important for me to be in my environment displaying that because this is where I’m from. It was always beyond ballet,” Aesha Ash stated.

1. Why did Aesha start The Swan Dreams Project?

A．To promote the images of females of color by ballet.

B．To expose her community to a world of women of color.

C．To grace the stages of the School of American Ballet.

D．To show the world that beauty and grace are defined by status.

2. Which of the following best describes the community she grew up in?

A．Comfortable.

B．Ancient.

C．Peaceful.

D．Unsafe.

3. What can’t we know from the passage?

A．Aesha had a gift for ballet according to her teacher.

B．The hardship Aesha faced was the color of her skin.

C．Acsha wanted to be a ballet dancer because of a woman dancer of color.

D．It is not easy to change the stereotypes that exist for women of color.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．A teacher provides chances for girls of color.	B．A woman brings ballet to the girls of color.
C．Ballet changes the life of a woman of color.	D．A woman has changed the negative stereotypes.

9 . How similar are language and music?

Language is part of our daily lives, no matter where we live in the world.     1     Both language and music play a huge role in our culture and here are some of their similarities.

Both language and music have a writing system.

Both language and music have their own systems of notation. Language uses alphabets to represent sounds and create meaning.     2     By reading and writing in these systems, we can communicate and preserve ideas and compositions through time.

    3    

Listening to the language someone speaks can provide valuable clues about their geographical origin. In the same way, we know that styles of music are different around the world, giving us the opportunity to explore many different cultures through their music and providing us with music for every situation.

Both share emotion.

    4     While you may be able to perceive it through my facial expressions, you can judge it with certainty through my words. Similarly, music has the ability to convey emotions such as anger, sadness, or happiness through its sound. Music can show you exactly how the composer was or is feeling, and allows us to share that emotion. When you feel happy, you might want to sing and dance to a happy song to celebrate your happiness.     5     I think we have all used music to express or process our emotions, often combining it with language in the form of song lyrics (歌词).

A．Both are expressive.

B．Both vary with culture.

C．How do you know that I am annoyed?

D．Similarly, music is part of many people’s lives.

E．Equally, music uses notes to represent pitches and rhythms.

F．We use language to express our thoughts.

G．In contrast, you probably also listen to sad music when you are feeling down.

10 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Yingge Dance, a traditional folk art     1     (combine) dancing, Chinese martial arts, and Chinese opera, is popular in the Chaoshan area of Guangdong province in South China. Yingge,     2     is written with the characters for “hero” and “song”, means heroic song in Chinese and Yingge dancers, as     3     (they) name implies, are the avatars of heroes.     4     the dancers each hold is a pair of short sticks and then they strike the sticks with force to create strong beats —     5     artistic display of masculinity. In 2006, the Puning Yingge Dance     6     (list) among the first batch of national intangible cultural heritages in China.

    7    , as young people move out of the villages, so are local folk arts gradually disappearing all around China. In Puning, Yingge is still danced during holidays such as the Lunar New Year and its performers are generally amateurs — farmers who have put down their tools and put    8    costumes. Some of the parts are passed down in the family, from father to son, and so far some villages have started giving performers a basic salary.

    9     (dress) in colorful clothes and wearing heavy makeup, ordinary villagers have created a song of cultural confidence. The     10     (perform), a must-watch for the local people, graces the village square one more time.