Lunar New Year in San Francisco is a festive time that’s celebrated by our large Asian community and embraced by people from many cultural backgrounds. As bucket list events go, Chinatown’s New Year Parade and San Francisco Symphony’s daylong celebration make this holiday feel complete to me.
This is my second time at SF Symphony’s cultural festivities following Día de los Muertos, and I love how they approach these days with abundance: It’s not just a concert, but activities all over the lobby, including costumed dragons that dance to drums, fortune reading, fan waving, and opportunities to hold a live amphibian. I say with complete enthusiasm that San Francisco Symphony is fun for the whole family.
Sometimes the party is the highlight of a fine arts activity, but on this day I’d hand that trophy to guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen, who treated the performance like one giant storytime with the San Francisco public and glitterati. Her infectious enthusiasm encouraged attendees including Supervisor Rafael Mandelman and Symphony President Prisca Geeslin to sing along to Gong Xi Gong Xi, a popular Chinese Lunar New Year song that translates to “Congratulations” or “Wishing You Happiness and Prosperity.”
Not to be outdone though was violin soloist Paul Huang, who — like Chen — worked entirely without a script. Huang walked out onstage while already playing the opening to Tan Dun’s Violin Concerto, Fire Ritual, and proceeded through several dramatic cadenzas and super high vibrato notes on the E string. As a former violinist, I remarked to him later at dinner how much stamina that performance must have taken. “Not really,” he said humbly. “The hardest part was the walking.”
I am a relative newcomer to after-show banquets and parties, so I am still delighted by the fresh takes that each organizer brings to them. SF Symphony made a mini experience just getting to the table with a romantic hallway preceding the Wattis Room that was draped in red curtains and mood-setting dim lights. Then the view alone at dinner felt worth the price of admission, with red lanterns everywhere accompanied by burgundy place settings and floral arrangements, and LCD screens with peaceful animations from the collection of the Asian Art Museum on several walls and hung from the ceiling.
As with many well-to-do functions, Mayor London Breed graced us with some remarks about our local community, followed by an appearance by SF Symphony second violinist Chen Zhao and Bay Area pianist Elizabeth Dorman, who performed selections from Chen Gang’s Butterfly Lover’s Violin Concerto.
“San Francisco is well-known for being an extremely diverse city, and there is no better way for us to celebrate the diversity than through the arts,” Breed said. “We are starting to bring in a new generation of young folks who are actively engaged in visiting the symphony, contributing to the symphony, and making sure that this institution is a viable one for generations to come.”
Somehow I thought we’d all go home after the banquet, but a packed house at Modernist social club down the street proved me wrong. Half of the filled space came for an after party, while upstairs Sharon Seto — who chaired the symphony’s latest Día de los Muertos event — celebrated her son’s engagement. I also spotted DJ Adam Swig and recently retired ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan, who expertly captured a bartender’s attention amid a very thirsty crowd.
Not to be missed, though, the dancing dragons, drum and cymbal players that were present at every junction of the day also found their way to Modernist, giving us a solid 20-minute set of drums, booty shaking and feeding the dragons customary red envelopes. I departed the evening very soon afterward, having spent a solid eight hours celebrating and now full of Lunar New Year joy, and looking forward to the rest of SF Symphony’s 2024 season.
Saul Sugarman is editor in chief of The Bold Italic.
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More photos from Lunar New Year with SF Symphony
Photos by Drew Altizer photography.
