18 seasons remembering Trinh Cong Son

On the evening of June 14, thousands of audiences filled the riverside stage area along the Perfume River to relive the timeless songs of the late musician Trinh Cong Son during the special artistic program “25 Years of Remembering Trinh Cong Son”, held under the theme “Hue - Saigon - Hanoi”.

Premiering in August 2025 and surpassing 700 billion VND in box office revenue, the film “Red Rain” (“Mua Do”) created an unprecedented box office phenomenon for a Vietnamese political and historical film. What few people know is that the person behind the film's music, touching the hearts of millions of viewers, is musician Cao Dinh Thang - a young man born and raised in Hue.

The translator and writer Buu Y is one of the few people of Hue who has continuously worked and created in the fields of culture and education from before 1975 to the present day.

In 2000, in the short piece entitled “Hue Diary,” written when he returned for the first Hue Festival, musician Trinh Cong Son wrote, “When you have a place to return, or to visit from time to time, you are very fortunate. There, you have a river, a mountain, and you can find again your old friends whose hair used to be black has now turned grey. You might suddenly meet a Hue girl on the street and ask her, ‘Is there anything new in Hue now?’ And immediately, or perhaps by chance, she will recite the two lines from a poem by Bui Giang: “Da thua xu Hue bay gio/ Van con nui Ngu ben bo song Huong” (“Yes, sir, Hue now/ Still has Ngu Mount by the Huong river…”)

One morning in late 2025, at Chieu Cafe on Dang Thai Than Street, behind the Hue Imperial Citadel, young musician Huynh Anh Khang had a conversation with us about music and his love for Hue – the land he feels he “owes a debt to.”