Events By Partner

October 21 - December 31

Here is one of China’s great cultural treasures, featuring puppeteers who train for 20 years to master their art. With singing and musical accompaniment, the acrobatic pageantry of the marionettes—some with 20 strings or more—depicts famous Chinese legends and folktales.

One of China’s most notable musicians curates and hosts this concert of traditional Chinese music. There’s a percussion quartet; Zhao Jiazhen, a hypnotic virtuoso of the qin; and music from the Dong ethnic minority.

Pipa virtuoso Wu Man has chosen two ensembles from China for a presentation of traditional music performed at village rituals, including temple fairs, weddings, funerals, and seasonal festivities.

In 1978, after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese music conservatories once again opened their doors to a new generation of composers. This program features chamber music by these extraordinary figures who have since revitalized contemporary Chinese music.

Many know Lang Lang as today’s most glittering classical music celebrity, a pianist seen by billions on TV at the Beijing Olympics. But here we can enjoy his talent in a more intimate setting: chamber music with young Chinese musicians.

The performance starts on the edge of the Pacific with music by an eclectic American who employs Chinese, Korean, and Mexican instruments. Then hear a new piece by a miraculous Chinese composer whose music trembles at the edge of silence and ecstasy. And lastly Mahler breathes the air of eternity in his late masterpiece.

It’s a cultural phenomenon: traditional Chinese instruments placed in a Western orchestral configuration. The Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra is one of the most famous of these groups, known for performing everything from folk music to newly commissioned classical works.

With their colorful orchestral suites, Bartók and Stravinsky depict the China of fairytales. A more realistic China—but equally evocative—emerges in music by Bright Sheng and Tan Dun. In Tan Dun’s concerto, percussion soloist Colin Currie makes intoxicating sounds, plunging his hands quite literally into water.

Stravinsky’s complete opera The Nightingale unfolds with playful, shining music that tells the story of a beautiful fable. Yo-Yo Ma begins the evening with a new cello concerto by Angel Lam, a young composer whose work sounds both Chinese and Western, contemporary but also timeless.