Staging a show of cooperation

Inspired by connections between the East and the West, musicians from China and the United States staged a concert, performing pieces from two sides of the world at New York City's Lincoln Center on Saturday night.

Presented by the China Arts and Entertainment Group, East/West: A Symphonic Celebration is part of Image China, a cultural exchange initiative aimed at introducing traditional and contemporary Chinese performance arts to people around the world.

Featuring conductor Cai Jindong from Bard College and the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the concert presented several traditional Chinese musical pieces and one US musical piece, including Butterfly Lovers, Great Wall Capriccio and the Appalachian Spring Suite.

"If the concert tonight can be illustrated as a picture, then this picture is from the Appalachian Mountains to the Great Wall. Through this picture, everyone can feel the connection between the cultures," says Cai in an interview with China Daily. "Music indeed is a very good art form for communication. Putting aside politics, economy and idealism, communication between people is the most important. And music is the best way to communicate."

The concert, which included performances by US musicians, provided the audience with the opportunity to get to know traditional Chinese music. By performing traditional Chinese music, Cai says the musicians will try to interpret it themselves.

"During our rehearsals, I already heard someone say, 'Whoa, Chinese traditional music is so beautiful'," Cai says.

Many enjoyed Chinese traditional music at the concert.

"It's very different from Western music, absolutely. Especially when you listen to how the soloists play, you can hear a lot of different inflections and styles of playing that are not traditionally done in Western music, which I thought is really interesting," says concertgoer Wesley Michalski to China Daily.

Shenghua Hu, the violinist who played the Butterfly Lovers violin concerto, says he felt proud to play Eastern music in the Lincoln Center, an iconic venue in New York City and one of the world's leading performing arts centers.

"Music is the universal language of mankind. Music helps peoples and nations communicate through means that are more efficient than words, because it touches the core of humanity by awakening empathy and compassion," Hu says.

Holly Flack, a coloratura soprano who sang songs derived from ancient Chinese poems A Night Mooring by the Maple Bridge, Ode to the Goose and Song of Snow, says the concert brought hope to people in China and the US, with the world still battling the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The concert is very reflective of hope. Everybody everywhere went through an unquestionably difficult time that was unprecedented. But it's like the crocus coming up for spring out of the snowy winter. We can come back slowly as long as we all cooperate together, and music itself is universal," Flack says.

"You don't even have to speak the same language to be moved by a piece of music. If everyone feels the same way emotionally, we can almost get over any other kind of problems we have."

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Ping-Pong Diplomacy between China and the US, a mission that helped to open up exchanges between the two countries, culminating in former US president Richard Nixon's 1972 China trip.

"Since then, people of all walks of life in China and the US, including those in the art field, have deeply engaged in promoting China-US relations and made contributions to build a healthy and stable bilateral relationship," writes Huang Ping, China's consul general in New York, in a letter to the concert.

Since 2012, Image China has presented a series of Chinese dance dramas at the Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater, including The Peony Pavilion, Silk Road, The Red Dress, The Legend of Mulan, Dragon Boat Racing, Confucius, Soaring Wings and Princess Zhaojun.

A second concert, China Inspirations, will be staged on Nov 28 with artists from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.