THE SOUND OF SPRING
A CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT
WITH THE ORCHESTRA NOW
In 2026, Celebrate Valentine’s Day and the Year of the Horse!
SATURDAY FEB 14
3PM
FISHER CENTER AT BARD
SUNDAY FEB 15
3 PM
JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER NYC
Featured Soloists for the 2026 Concert from the Central Conservatory of Music and the Bard Conservatory of Music
PROGRAM INFORMATION (CLICK ONE)
PHOTO GALLERY
The Sound of Spring at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Photo Fadi Kheir.
Jindong Cai and suona soloist Yazhi Guo in 2024. Photo Fadi Kheir.
Chinese instrument demonstration at Bard’s Fisher Center.
Photo by Karl Rabe.
The Orchestra Now at Fisher Center in 2024. Photo by Karl Rabe.
Chinese instrument demonstration at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Photo by Fadi Kheir.
Jindong Cai and Yazhi Guo at Fisher Center. Photo by Karl Rabe.
ABOUT
The US-China Music Institute presents a Chinese New Year concert at Bard’s Fisher Center and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City every year to celebrate the joyful Spring Festival that marks the lunar new year holiday in China and around the world. The concerts are co-sponsored by the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM), China, and regularly features soloists from the distinguished faculty of their Traditional Instruments program as well as other world-class performers.
These are family-friendly events with fun Chinese New Year activities before the concerts. Come early and bring the kids!
PAST CONCERTS
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jindong Cai. Photo: Patrick Li
Conductor Jindong Cai is the director of the US-China Music Institute, professor of music and arts at Bard College, and associate conductor of Bard’s The Orchestra Now. Prior to joining Bard he was a professor of performance at Stanford University. Over the 30 years of his career in the United States, Cai has established himself as an active and dynamic conductor, scholar of Western classical music in China, and leading advocate of music from across Asia. LEARN MORE
In 2015 conductor, educator, and music historian Leon Botstein founded The Orchestra Now (TŌN), a group of vibrant young musicians from across the globe, as a graduate program at Bard College. TŌN offers both a three-year master’s degree in Curatorial, Critical, and Performance Studies and a two-year advanced certificate in Orchestra Studies. The orchestra’s home base is the Fisher Center at Bard, where it performs multiple concerts each season and takes part in the annual Bard Music Festival. It also performs regularly at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other venues across NYC and beyond.
The orchestra has performed with many distinguished guest conductors and soloists, including Leonard Slatkin, Gil Shaham, Fabio Luisi, Joan Tower, Vadim Repin, Tan Dun, and JoAnn Falletta. Among TŌN’s many recordings are albums featuring pianists Piers Lane, Anna Shelest, and Orion Weiss; Buried Alive with baritone Michael Nagy; Classics of American Romanticism; and the soundtrack to the motion picture Forte. Recordings of TŌN’s live concerts from the Fisher Center can be heard on Classical WMHT-FM and WWFM The Classical Network, and are featured regularly on Performance Today, broadcast nationwide. More info at ton.bard.edu.
Special thanks to Yi-Zhi Huang for The Sound of Spring calligraphy.