BC Chamber Choir Goes to China

The BC Chamber Choir, under Assistant Professor Jonathan Babcock, traveled to China last month as part of the North American Festival Chorus that performed two pre-Olympic concerts with the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra at Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall and the Oriental Art Centre Concert Hall in Shanghai.

Assembled from eleven choirs from around the United States, the 452-voice choir sang Olympic-themed works by Leonard Bernstein and John Williams as well as movements from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In addition, the Festival Chorus thrilled the Chinese audience with its rendition of a movement of the Yellow River Cantata, by Xian Xinghai, in Chinese! This latter piece was conducted by Yang Li of the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra.

The Festival Chorus trip was sponsored by the Center of International Cultural Exchange and Kingsway International. The BC Chamber Choir’s traveling expenses were underwritten, in part, through gifts from the Brooklyn College Foundation and the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce in New York.