Lunar New Year Events at Davies

Earl Lee, conductor for the Lunar New Year concert (photograph by Lim Hak Hyun, courtesy of SFS)

Last month the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) announced a minor schedule change for its annual Lunar New Year Concert & Banquet. At that time the Web page for the event had announced that the conductor would be Earl Lee, but any other specifics had not been provided. That program can now be found on the Web page, as well as the announcement that the program will include soprano soloist Sumi Jo. The vocal selections that she will perform will be “Three Wishes of a Rose” by Huang Tzu, “As the Spring Approaches Across the River” by Geung-Su Lim, “Pioneer” by Du-Nam Cho, and “In the Flower Clouds” by Hong-ryeol Lee. The instrumental offerings will be “The Angel from Formosa” by Tyzen Hsiao, the “Saibei Dance” from the second Saibei suite by An-lun Huang, and selected excerpts from both Folk Songs for Orchestra by Huang Ruo and Transcend by Zhou Tian.

As previously corrected, this concert will begin at 5 p.m. on Sunday, February 5. The doors to the lobby of Davies Symphony Hall will open at 4 p.m. As usual, the pre-concert Festival Reception will feature an array of entertainment and activities. Participants will include a numerologist, a fortune teller, lion and dragon dancers, and students from the Au Co Vietnamese Cultural Center performing music on traditional instruments.

The concert will be followed by the annual Lunar New Year Banquet, which will begin at 6:30 p.m. The venue will be the Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall, which is located at 300 Franklin Street at the rear of Davies. This will be an evening of dining and entertainment, the latter provided by Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ and the Blood Moon Orchestra. A Web page has been created that provides the different levels of prices for the Banquet, including how much of that price is tax-deductible.

Tickets for the concert will be handled by the SFS Box Office. Davies is located at 201 Van Ness Avenue, and the main entrance is the Box Office lobby on Grove Street, about half a block to the west of Van Ness Avenue. Ticket prices in which seating is currently available range from $35 to $110. They may be purchased online through the Select Seats Web page for this program on the SFS Web site, by calling 415-864-6000, or by visiting the Box Office. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday and from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday.