Yu Long the artistic director of the Beijing Music Festival and Columbia Artists Music team up to commemorate "ping-pong diplomacy".

In April 1971, members of a US table tennis team became the first American athletes to visit China before the two countries established diplomatic relations. The sport helped to pave the way for Richard Nixon to come to Beijing in February of the following year. Two months after the US president's visit, Chinese table tennis players were invited to the United States.

» Read the full article (China Daily USA)

Photo credit: Table tennis players share the stage with musicians in the PingPong Concerto in Beijing. Jiang Dong / China Daily

On Friday, about 3,000 Cubans and foreigners sat in plastic chairs in a plaza in Havana, their eyes darting between international virtuosos almost within arm’s reach.

» Read the full article (The New York Times)

Photo Credit: From left, Lang Lang, the Chinese pianist; Marin Alsop, the American conductor; and Chucho Valdés, the Cuban pianist, after a free concert at Cathedral Plaza in Havana on Friday. Credit Alejandro Ernesto/European Pressphoto Agency

A major concert in Havana being planned for next month will open with an American conductor, Marin Alsop, leading the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba in the “Cuban Overture” by that most American of composers, George Gershwin. It will go on to feature the star pianists Lang Lang and Chucho Valdés playing together in works by the Cuban composers Ernesto Lecuona and Antonio María Romeu and the American composer James P. Johnson.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Commissioned by 2015 Beijing Music Festival and 2015 MISA Festival, composed by Andy Akiho, RICOCHET is a concerto for Ping Pong, violin, percussion and orchestra. World premiered in Shanghai on July 18, 2015 at Shanghai Symphony Hall by Shanghai Symphony Orchestra conducted by conductor Huang Yi with violinist Elizabeth Zeltser, percussionist David Cossin and competitive ping pong players Michael Landers and Ariel Hsing, RICOCHET is a playful concerto which perfectly combines the rhythm of sport and music, and juxtaposed an intricate polyrhythmic score for violin and

percussion with the comparably random sounds of an actual Ping‐Pong match. Two Ping Pong players volleyed along in approximate tempo, first with paddles, then tambourines and glasses, and – as a cadenza – against a bass drum and a gong.

CLICK HERE to watch the trailer of this piece on Youtube.

Culminates with Historic Performance in Tehran

Conductor Long Yu led the China Philharmonic Orchestra last week on a six-stop tour through Central Asia-- replicating the famed Silk Road route-- which culminated on Friday, August 14th with a performance in Tehran, Iran.  

Friday night's concert featured Chinese and Western repertory including the music of Dvorak’s “New World” symphony, which Maestro Yu conducted from the original score used for the work’s 1893 premiere with the New York Philharmonic, adding to the historical significance of the event.  

As Maestro Yu told the Washington Post, “The New York Philharmonic gave me the original parts, so it’s very touching if you see the music, you’re touching that history."  

Read the full Washington Post coverage here. 

Culminates with Historic Performance in Tehran

Conductor Long Yu led the China Philharmonic Orchestra last week on a six-stop tour through Central Asia-- replicating the famed Silk Road route-- which culminated on Friday, August 14th with a performance in Tehran, Iran.  

Friday night's concert featured Chinese and Western repertory including the music of Dvorak’s “New World” symphony, which Maestro Yu conducted from the original score used for the work’s 1893 premiere with the New York Philharmonic, adding to the historical significance of the event.  

As Maestro Yu told the Washington Post, “The New York Philharmonic gave me the original parts, so it’s very touching if you see the music, you’re touching that history."  

Read the full Washington Post coverage here . 

Four of the American theater’s leading African-American singer-actors will join Audra McDonald next spring in a musical that seeks to reintroduce one of the first all-black shows on Broadway. 

Read  the complete article at The New York Times