Photo: Courtesy of Beijing Music Festival

The celebrated Chinese composer and conductor Tan Dun will conduct the China Symphony Orchestra together with suona performer Liu Wenwen, violin player Lu Wei and celloist Wang Jian to kick off the annual Beijing Music Festival on October 5, 2024, which is also commemorating the 60th anniversary of China-France diplomatic relations.

The opening concert is themed "A Hundred Birds from East and West - Pay Tribute to the Phoenix," as it will allow the world to hear the sound of Chinese music through the resonance and harmony of traditional Chinese instruments and Western orchestras, according to Yu Long, chairman of the Beijing Music Festival Art Committee. 

Ten concerts in various styles will be staged during the upcoming Beijing Music Festival from October 5 to 13, with the theme Voices from Afar. 

Among them are two new commissions on Chinese themes, Jiu Ge + Immortal Love by composer Zhou Long, Wynton Marsalis, Trumpet/Arrangement, Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra and Horizons, Concert of African Choral Music by the Cape Town Opera Chorus.

The closing concert will be the semi-staged production of Progy and Bess by George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward for two nights at the Poly Theatre in Beijing. 

To date, the festival has staged nearly 60 operas, ranging from Wagner's masterpiece The Ring of the Nibelung and Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk to Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and other opera masterpieces of contemporary Chinese and Western composers such as White Snake, Angel's Bone and Written on Skin. 

The Beijing Music Festival will continue to cooperate with the Beijing Municipal Administration Center of Parks to launch the Music Garden series, which will allow audiences to appreciate the diverse and ancient music presented by the Cape Town Opera Chorus.

In terms of public events, the festival will launch a variety of activities such as public rehearsals, guided music tours and master classes for music lovers, young kids and students from professional colleges, according to Beijing Music Festival Artistic Director Zou Shuang.

The Meeting the Maestros series includes conversations with Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Gautier Capucon, Pulitzer winner composer Zhou Long and Wynton Masalis.