4th Great Lakes Confucius Institute Music Festival to Feature Innovative Chinese Music

The 4th annual Great Lakes Confucius Institute Music Festival, co-sponsored by Valparaiso University’s Department of Music, Chinese & Japanese Studies Program and Confucius Institute will be held on Thursday, Oct. 13 at Valparaiso University Center for the Arts and Chapel of the Resurrection. This year, the Festival will feature new innovative Chinese music as well as dance performed by the 26 visiting instrumentalists, vocalists and dancers of the West Lake Performing Troupe from Zhejiang Media University of Hangzhou, China.

The Festival will start at 9:00 a.m. at Valparaiso University Center for Arts with three hundred students from regional schools participating in master classes offered on the erhu, pipa, sheng, dizi, guzheng, and yangqin—traditional Chinese instruments that provide unusual, intriguing sounds inherent in Chinese music. Students will rehearse with the Chinese Ensemble throughout the day, and then join in the larger festival concert performance later that evening.

Professor Young Wang of Shanghai Conservatory, a top musicologist and popular TV and radio music show host in China, will also talk to the participants on Modernization of Chinese Music and China's Current Music Life.

The Festival concert offered Thursday, October 13 is at 6:00 p.m. in the Valparaiso University’s Chapel of Resurrection featuring The West Lake Performing Troupe, the Valparaiso University Symphony Orchestra and the six participating high school orchestras. This performance is free to the public—don’t miss this extraordinary opportunity to experience an adventure through music with several hundred gifted musicians from two cultures.

As part of the larger performance series of the Great Lakes Music Festival, the West Lake Performing Troupe will also be performing at area schools including Purdue University in West Lafayette, Thea Bowen Academy, Culver Academy, Ivy Tech Community College in Valparaiso and DePaul University in Chicago.

The public is welcome to view the events throughout the day. For more information about this opportunity please contact Professor Jiangang Liu or Professor Jianyun Meng at Confucius@valpo.eduThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 219-242-8655.