[258] MTSU rings in Chinese ‘Year of the Dog’ with inaugural arts festival

MURFREESBORO — MTSU will brighten the spring 2018 semester with a series of events to celebrate Chinese New Year.

The Center for Chinese Music and Culture and the Confucius Institute will present the Murfreesboro Festival of Chinese Arts in February and March with a variety of concerts, an exhibition of Chinese fine art, lectures and workshops.

“We are very excited to present the first festival of Chinese arts in this region,” said Mei Han, center director. “There is something for everybody in these events, as they are both educational and entertaining.”

The Murfreesboro Center for the Arts, 110 W. College St., will be the site for the Chinese art exhibition with three hands-on workshops on Chinese calligraphy and brush painting by:

·      Florida State University professor Nan Liu, 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 30;

·      Qingdao University of Science and Technology professor Jianhua Yang, 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 9;

·      and MTSU professor and Confucius Institute Director Guanping Zheng, 3 p.m. Saturday, March 3.

A celebratory dragon dance performed by the University of Memphis Confucius Institute Dragon Dance Group is slated for 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 9, on the town square in conjunction with the Murfreesboro Art Crawl.

Scheduled lectures and topics include:

• Grammy Award winner Abigail Washburn, “Bridging Cultures through Language and Music,” 3 p.m. Feb. 1, MTSU Center for Chinese Music and Culture, 503 Bell St., Murfreesboro;
• Center for Chinese Music and Culture Director Mei Han, “Macrocosm through Microcosm: An Introduction to Chinese Music,” Wednesday, Feb. 14, Belmont University School of Music, 1900 Belmont Blvd., Nashville;
• University of Michigan Professor Joseph Lam, keynote address at the Conference of Opera and Musical Theater in the United States, “The Presence and Absence of Kunqu in Operatic U.S.: A Historical Review,” 11 a.m. Sunday, March 25, Room 104, MTSU’s Bragg Media and Entertainment Building.

A visiting orchestra from the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music of China, featuring award-winning faculty and students, will perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 16, which is Chinese New Year’s Day. The concert will be in Hinton Hall in MTSU’s Wright Music Building.

Chinese New Year is China’s most important traditional festival, according to www.travelchinaguide.com. On the Chinese 12-year animal zodiac cycle, 2018 is the Year of the Dog.

The MTSU Symphony Orchestra will perform with renowned Chinese suona player Zhusong Du and Mei Han on the Chinese zheng as soloists at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 24. A suona is a double-reed pipe, and a zheng is a plucked 21-stringed instrument.

Han and Wei Liang, a visiting professor from the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, will perform as part of the Stones River Chamber Players series at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 26, in Hinton Hall in MTSU’s Wright Music Building. Liang plays the erhu, a two-string Chinese fiddle.

Chinese art by Nan Liu and Jianhua Yang will be on display at the Center for the Arts from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Jan. 30 through Tuesday, March 8.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Han at 615-898-5718 or ccmc@mtsu.edu.