2025 rings in the Year of the Wood Snake and New Jersey Symphony held their annual Lunar New Year celebration a bit earlier than last year – after all, the Lunar New Year works on a different cycle. Saturday evening, January 25, 2025 once again needed nearly all of Prudential Hall at NJPAC to hold the Cultural Exchange Festival featuring performers and crafts people from Prince Kung’s Palace Museum in Beijing. And if you want to level up, there was a VIP tier. VIPs received early access to the Cultural Festival along with a special Reception and the Celebration Concert featuring Xian Zhang conducting New Jersey Symphony, the Peking University Alumni Chorus, Starry Arts Children’s Chorus and the Edison Chinese School Lion Dance Team! Special guest soloists Min Kwon on Piano Michael Fabiano, Tenor rounded out the special guests.
The VIP Reception featured delicious food and drink, though the real draw for most was the early access to the Cultural Festival. The Cultural Festival included dance, calligraphy, confections, performances and one of a kind experiences from the Prince Kung’s Palace Museum. The flavor of the festival ranged from aural to oral, and touched every heart as East and West met in harmony.
Tradition is at the heart of every NJ Symphony Lunar New Year since Xian Zhang first brought this celebration to its current robust form and every year Edison Chinese School’s Dragon Dance Team opens the event. This concert had Xian Zhang at the helm and the lead off was Li Huanzhi’s “Spring Festival Overture”, then Selections from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 its scintillating piano glory brought the energy up even further. Dr. Kwon is a professor of piano at Mason Gross School of the Arts, and her world-renowned skills were grand to behold. Mozart must have been beaming. Moving then to Dr. Patricio Molina’s new arrangement of the traditional Korean folk song “Arirang”, the winner of the Lunar New Year Composition Competition, this became Dr. Kwon’s encore to her brilliant Mozart performance. The Competition was newly instituted, its design is to encourage composers of experience ranging from neophyte to knowledgeable to submit their work.
Starry Arts Group Children’s Chorus shared two selections, the first of which was “Yuan Ri”, that created miles of smiles throughout Prudential Hall. The text is from Wang Anshi’s poem from the Song Dynasty cheering in the new year. The children then shared “The Red Dragonfly”, a children’s song from Japan where the storyteller is the Dragonfly themself. Then, combining the forces of Starry Arts Group and the mighty voices of the Peking University Alumni Chorus, Michael Fabiano regaled the audience with some gems by Giacomo Puccini that included both individual arias and choruses, with “Nessun dorma” from Turandot. Translated as “none shall sleep”, after such an exciting night how is sleep even possible!
Celebrate the Year of the Snake with a myriad of events with New Jersey Symphony. Your experiences are waiting https://www.njsymphony.org.