Bard East/West Ensemble & China Now Chamber Orchestra

The ninth annual China Now Music Festival opens at Carnegie Hall, with a program that spans centuries, borders, and instruments. This year’s theme “Chasing Dreams” celebrates America’s 250th anniversary by telling stories of the shared dreams, resilience, and creativity that connect all of us.

The evening opens with three works written for the Bard East/West Ensemble (BE/WE), a chamber group that pairs a Western string quintet with seven Chinese instruments including pipa, guzheng, ruan, dizi, sheng, suona, and erhu.

The centerpiece of the night is the New York premiere of The Rift, a gripping new chamber opera by acclaimed composer Huang Ruo and Tony Award–winning librettist David Henry Hwang. The opera dramatizes the contentious story behind one of America’s most beloved monuments: architect Maya Lin’s fight to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the face of fierce public backlash. The Rift: Opera in One Act is told through four interwoven voices: Lin herself, a Vietnam War veteran, a Vietnamese refugee, and former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. In Hwang’s words, it is “a story about how a work of art can help heal a country.”

Program:
Zhang Zheng, composer
Feng · Ya · Song
Luk Wai Chun, composer
Moments Between Ledges and Frets for Pipa and Ensemble

Wang Danhong, composer
Forever Shandan-dan
Intermission
Huang Ruo, composer; David Henry Hwang, librettist
The Rift: Opera in One Act chamber opera

Performers:
Jindong Cai, conductor
Yang Jin, pip
Karen Vuong, soprano
Michelle Mariposa, mezzo-soprano
Edward Graves, tenor
Daniel Klein, baritone

Eric Ting, director

Bard East/West Ensemble (BE/WE)
China Now Chamber Orchestra