A Night at the Opera-- and the Symphony

I'm typing on my iPhone so this will be brief!

Tonight we had our first of two performances with Bayshore Symphony and several special guest artists here to help us celebrate Chinese New Year.

(now I'm back on my computer!)

In addition to Beethoven's Egmont Overture, and Brahm's Variation on a Theme by Haydn, the entire second half of tonight's program consisted of several well-known Chinese folks tunes and songs from a few different Peking Operas. Engineer and musician, Austin Huang arranged these Chinese tunes for performance with a western orchestra - - - like the Bayshore Symphony 

Ingrid, above, is only 7 years old but she has been training to perform Chinese opera since she was about 3 years old (which apparently is the typical age one begins such training). She was fantastic in both her performance, her stage presence, and her charming personality. 

In addition to Ingrid's solo with the orchestra, there were also several folk tunes performed by our guests on Chinese instruments including a pipa, an erhu, and a jinghu.

We are performing this very same incredible concert one more time tomorrow (Sunday) in Bellingham at Central Lutheran Church at 3pm, in case anyone local is reading this. I guarantee a good time!

Here is the symphony's website.