Kick Off Your Lunar New Year 2024 with Traditional Chinese Tunes

The Year of the Dragon, symbolizing good fortune and prosperity, lands on February 10, 2024. On this occasion, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Bourgie Hall will present its Lunar New Year 2024 concert, celebrating with a repertoire of Chinese classical music.

Liu Fang, hailed as the “empress of the pipa,” will be joined by Liu Xiyan, who will play the guqin in a traditional Taoist style. The concert honors the tradition of togetherness, welcoming a new dawn, and channelling the dragon’s powerful energy.

Liu Fang blends intricate traditional Chinese musical styles with contemporary sensibilities and is celebrated for her collaborations with artists from different musical traditions. Her preferred instrument, the pipa, is a four-stringed lute with a pear-shaped body, whose sound has been an essential part of Chinese music in both classical and folk genres for centuries.

Liu Fang has invited maestro Liu Xiyan to play the authentic silk-stringed guqin for a program that pays homage to the classical literati. The guqin, composed of the two Chinese characters “gu” and “qin,” meaning “ancient” and “string instrument,” is said to have been created by the ancient sage king Fu Xi, making it the earliest recorded string instrument in history.

Program highlights include Liu Fang’s pipa solo The Swan, composed in 1984 by pipa lute master Liu Dehai in praise of the graceful bird and its quest for freedom.

Liu Xiyan will perform the guqin solo Cai Zhen You, inspired by Zhuangzi’s Tian Yun, a piece said to embody the return to innocence and the harmonious coexistence with nature. He will also perform Shi Shang Liu Quan, a guqin solo inspired by the verses of Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei: “The bright moon shines between the pines, the clear spring flows over the stones.”

Part of the MMFA Music of Global Cultures series, the Lunar New Year concert is a musical journey that forms an expression of cultural lineage, and is one of the Museum’s many initiatives aiming to connect and strengthen bonds with the Asian Canadian community.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Bourgie Hall presents the Lunar New Year concert on February 10, 2024. Tickets are available at the link below.

https://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/activities/concert-for-the-lunar-new-year/