Classical music takes center stage

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has started a series of virtual concerts since Monday to welcome the Year of the Ox, which begins on Feb 12.

Over the past few days, audiences have enjoyed performances through videos streamed online, featuring such musicians as violinist Yang Ming and pianist Jade Lucia Nieczkowski performing Fisherman's Song by Moonlight, adapted from a Chinese music piece for the guzheng (Chinese zither), and classical guitarist Yang Xuefei performing White Snow in the Spring Sunlight, a classic piece of traditional Chinese music, which first appeared in a pipa (a four-stringed lute) score during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Under the baton of conductor Zhang Xian, the orchestra will present a virtual concert on Saturday.

The program includes the classic Chinese music pieces, Spring Festival Overture by composer Li Huanzhi (1919-2000), Singing and Smiling by composer Gu Jianfen, as well as Western classical favorites, such as Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile for cello and orchestra and Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla's Libertango.

The Peking University Alumni Chorus and Starry Arts Group Children's Chorus will join the concert.

"This is the third year that the NJSO is presenting a Chinese New Year program. I initiated this project after I became the music director there. It has been a favorite program for our audience," says Zhang.

"I hope that this year's virtual celebration fills our audiences with strength, joy and hope for better days in the year ahead."

Born in Liaoning province's Dandong, Zhang was exposed to music as a child. She started studying piano at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music at age 11 and stayed at the conservatory until she moved to the United States in 1998 to complete her doctoral studies at the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.

Zhang received the first prize at the Maazel/Vilar Conductors' Competition in 2002.

She became US conductor Lorin Maazel's assistant at the New York Philharmonic the same year and then the philharmonic's assistant conductor in 2004.

She worked as the Sioux City (Iowa) Symphony Orchestra's music director from 2005 to 2007 and has been the music director for Milan's Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra since 2009.

Zhang has returned to China regularly to perform with symphony orchestras and musicians since 2008, as classical music continues to gain popularity in the country.

In 2015, she became the BBC National Orchestra of Wales' first female principal guest conductor. The next year she was appointed as music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

Zhang says the orchestra has been streaming concerts since March 2020 due to the pandemic.

She has been invited to conduct in-person concerts with the Houston, Seattle and Detroit symphonies. Her first live concert last year was with Seattle Symphony, performing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in September.

"With extra precautions and safety measures, these concerts were successful and especially meaningful to me since not much was happening in the classical music world (due to COVID-19)," she says.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has so far recorded three live performances and one virtually mixed program, all of which have been warmly received by the audiences, "who have been starved artistically and musically in isolation", Zhang says.

"I think being social is in our DNA. I consider this isolation period a great opportunity to focus on family, and focus on my children's musical education at home and my personal growth," she says.

"The pandemic is changing the world in many ways. Classical music will endure and survive. The least and the only thing we can do now, as classical musicians, is to be optimistic, because there's no alternative."