Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts and LSO celebrate 15 year collaboration

Over the past three weeks, thirty-three young musicians from Taiwan, China, and conservatories across the U.S. were gathered for private lessons, master classes, chamber music and orchestra at the Walnut Hill School for the Performing Arts. This remarkable summer Music Festival, directed by Dr. Cathy Chan and sponsored by her Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts, has introduced scores of talented young people to the United States over nineteen years. For many, the Festival is a life-changer - some return every summer, others enroll at Walnut Hill or go on to conservatory studies in the U.S.

On Wednesday evening, August 18, 2010, 13 young orchestra musicians from the Summer Music Festival joined the musicians of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra for its annual summer performance.

Pianist Rui Zhang, winner of the 2010 Concerto Competition, made her American debut at an American landmark, the Hatch Memorial Shell on the Esplanade on the banks of the Charles River.

The concert drew a crowd of 9000, who cheered to Boston and Gershwin, loved the Beethoven and danced to Duke Ellington's "In the Mood."