155 Days after Shutdown, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra Resumes Its Season with a Global Livestreaming Initiative on 14 June 2020

For Immediate Release
Shanghai, 11 June 2020

155 Days after Shutdown, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra Resumes Its Season with a Global Livestreaming Initiative on 14 June 2020

• SPO resumes its season with a full orchestra performing for a live audience on 14 June

• The last performance of the season took place on 10 January

• Artistic Director ZHANG Yi will conduct music of Paganini, Chen Shu-Si, and Stravinsky

• The concert features OPUS KLASSIK Award-winning violinist HUANG Bin

• This is the first livestream on Facebook by a major orchestra from Mainland China

On 14 June 2020, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) will resume its 2019-20 season when it gives a full-scale orchestral performance at Shanghai Symphony Hall before a live audience. The concert will be livestreamed on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, making the SPO one of the first orchestras in Mainland China to undertake a global livestreaming initiative for fully orchestral concerts.

The performance will begin at 7:30p.m. Beijing time on 14 June and then be delay-streamed starting at 1:00p.m. ET (7:00p.m. Central European Time) on 15 June on Facebook and Twitter. The stream will remain available for viewing for an indefinite period.

SPO Artistic Director ZHANG Yi will conduct the full orchestra in a program of Chen Shu-Si’s Tung Flower Suite in its Mainland China premiere, Niccolò Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in B minor, and Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. He will be joined by HUANG Bin, an OPUS KLASSIK Award-winning violinist, as the soloist in the Paganini.

The last regular concert by the SPO took place on 10 January, when the orchestra performed Bruckner’s Symphony No. 1. Since then, over a dozen concerts have been postponed or cancelled because of public health reasons during the coronavirus pandemic.

During the period of closure to date, the SPO has streamed 13 pre-recorded concerts and livestreamed 8 chamber music concerts in an effort to maintain the social relevance of the performing arts in a time of crisis. Altogether, these streams were viewed over 300,000 times. SPO’s brass quintet stream on 25 April featured Steven Verhelst’s Song for Health and contributed to the #musicdoesntstop campaign launched by Martin Schippers, trombonist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, to support healthcare workers and first responders fighting Covid-19 at the frontlines.

Members of the orchestra went back to work and began to rehearse in May, preparing to return to the concert stage in June. The concert will be performed before a live audience of about 350 people who will be subject to social distancing regulations. It will be captured and streamed live in China on amadeus.tv and also delay-streamed on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. This marks the first global streaming initiative by an orchestra from Mainland China since the pandemic began that is intended to reach a wider public outside Mainland China.

Early this year, the SPO’s concert from 10 January was uploaded on amadeus.tv’s YouTube channel. Previously, the world premiere of Peng-Peng Gong’s Symphony No. 10 “Peking Opera”, a joint commission by the SPO and the Philadelphia Orchestra, was streamed live on Wiener Staatsoper Live at home, making the SPO among China's most accessible orchestras for international audiences online.

SUN Hong, President of the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, states: “The SPO remains committed to performing live for our audience in Shanghai while keeping a strong profile on the internet through online partnerships. With this global streaming initiative, we stand with the rest of the world and share our music with you.”

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1:00p.m. ET (7:00p.m. Central European Time)
15 June Monday

Watch at
www.facebook.com/KLASSIKOMNEWS
www.youtube.com/RudolphTang
https://twitter.com/klassikom

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Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra
The Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) was founded in 1956 as the Shanghai Film Orchestra. In 1996 it was renamed Shanghai Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, and it assumed its present name in 2004. ZHANG Yi is the Artistic Director.
Over the years, the SPO has inspired the cultural landscape of Shanghai by collaborating with a star-studded array of conductors including Joe Hisaishi, Peter Flor, Max Pommer, Cristian Macelaru, and Thomas Sanderling, as well as such soloists as Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Peter-Lukas Graf, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, Jessye Norman, Yo-Yo Ma, Támás Vásáry, Boris Berman, Paul Badura-Skoda, Robert Blocker, Alexei Volodin, and Vincent Lucas.
The orchestra performs regularly at major festivals and halls in Europe as well as in such countries as Kazakhstan, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Australia. Through its partnerships with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the SPO introduces the richness of contemporary music and the top level of international orchestral musicians to audiences in Shanghai.

ZHANG Yi, conductor
German-trained conductor ZHANG Yi is Music Director of the National Ballet of China and Artistic Director of the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and the Zhejiang Symphony Orchestra. After graduating from the Saarbrücken Hochschule für Musik, where he studied with Prof. Max Pommer, he returned to Beijing and has since conducted major orchestras in Beijing and  Shanghai, as well as the Macau Orchestra, Taipei Symphony, London Philharmonic, German Radio Philharmonic, Württemberg Chamber Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, and Kungliga Operan, among others.

HUANG Bin, violinist
HUANG Bin, a native of Changsha in Hunan Province, has maintained international prominence, winning both the Paganini International Violin Competition in Genoa and the Munich (ARD) International Music Competition. She has been universally lauded for her interpretive and technical skills and hailed as “a winner in what matters the most” (The Washington Post).
Her concert career has taken her across the globe to perform with such leading orchestras as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Korean Broadcasting System Symphony Orchestra, and China National Symphony Orchestra. She has appeared at major concert venues including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Opera City in Tokyo, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, and the People’s Great Hall in China.
In September 2019, HUANG won the OPUS KLASSIK Award in the Chamber Music: Trio category with an album she recorded with pianist Zhou Yubo and cellist Alexander Suleiman. 

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Press Contact for the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra

SHEN  Jie | 61194887@qq.com | 86 135 8553 0991