“If it’s spring, the Philadelphia Orchestra must be headed for China,” writes David Patrick Stearns in Tuesday’s (4/22) Philadelphia Inquirer. “In the third year of its five-year agreement with the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the orchestra opens its 2 1/2-week tour there on May 21, travels on to Shanghai, then plunges into less-well-charted cities” before ending in Taiwan and Japan. “The provincial Chinese cities include Changsha and Shenzhen … chosen in part because of the new Tan Dun multimedia work Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women, which will be performed.… The orchestra hopes to have an event with the women who speak the ancient Nu Shu language in Tan’s Secret Songs, and who were recorded in a village outside Changsha…. The tour will have particularly numerous joint-ensemble concerts where Philadelphians will play on the same program, and sometimes side by side, with local orchestras.… ‘It ties into the larger notion of people-to-people exchange … it’s a big lift to the local orchestras … and, I believe, has a lasting impact artistically,’ ” said Ryan Fleur, executive vice president of orchestra advancement.
Posted April 22, 2014
Pictured (left to right): Philadelphia Orchestra Violist Che-Hung Chen, Concertmaster David Kim, violinist Daniel Han, and Acting Associate Principal Cello Yumi Kendell give a pop-up performance at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, May 2012. Photo by Chris Lee
