Lunar New Year Concert Showcases Top Talent Across Cultures

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — As the founder of American Oriental Bioengineering, a Chinese pharmaceutical company, Lily Li was used to having assistants and secretaries ready to help with anything she needed. But she was all alone on her first trip to New York City in 2000.

Li, a longtime resident of Beijing, didn't speak English at the time and had only a translator to guide her through awkward business conversations with Americans, she said. She called it a "painful" and "frustrating" experience.

"I had a burden to make the company successful, with the fact that I was not familiar with the culture," Li said.

Li adjusted as she spent more time in the U.S. She helped get American Oriental listed on American stock exchanges — a first for a Chinese pharmaceutical company, she says — and graduated from Harvard Business School's executive MBA program in 2008. She now lives near the United Nations in Midtown.

Since her first uncomfortable trips, Li has learned music is a "universal language" that can help bridge cultural gaps like those she encountered. A desire to give a platform to Jiaxin Tian, a renowned pianist and longtime friend of Li's, led her to start the Chinese New Year Spectacular at Carnegie Hall, now in its fourth year.

This year's concert on Feb. 24 brings together top-flight Chinese, American and European musicians to perform a repertoire of songs from both cultures to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday. Li co-produces the show through her new company, Harvard Wealth Strategy & Management.

"Music everybody can understand, not only the language but also the feeling, the deeper meaning," Li said. "... If we start with this beautiful tool on the international-level stage, it could be really effective."

Tian will headline a diverse lineup that also includes Dr. William Weimin Cai, an acupuncturist with a booming tenor voice, and former Mayor David Dinkins, who will read "The Gettysburg Address" to narrate Aaron Copland's composition "Lincoln Portrait."

The concert has drawn interest from dignitaries as well as the audience, which Li said comprises mostly Americans. Zhang Meifang, the deputy consul general of China, plans to attend, she said.

"When people come to the show they'll see how these cultures are complimentary cultures," said Charles Sullivan, the president of Premier Event Management and the show's other co-producer.

The concert will mark Tian's fifth time playing at Carnegie Hall. The daughter of an opera singer and a composer, Tian he made her first appearance there in 2013, the year she graduated from the Manhattan School of Music, where she came from Beijing to study in 2010.

To Tian, the concert is a platform to showcase the unique sounds of Chinese compositions at a celebration of the Lunar New Year, which she said is like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day rolled into one.

"Every time more people hear my music, they can feel my life exeperience, and they can feel our history and our culture, too," Tian said. "Because we have a lot of fantastic music in China, but not a lot of people know that."

Li said she wants to pass on the value of cultural exchange to the next generation. That's why she started Harvard Wealth Strategy & Management in 2016. Among its many services, the company helps send American students to study in China and vice versa, she said.

Last year, the firm brought a group of students from New York City to China for the Joy Dancing Beijing Festival, marking the first time Americans had ever participated in the international event, Li said.

Li said she sees hope for the future in young people, like her son, who moved to the U.S. at age 13 to attend a boarding school in Massachusetts. He struggled at first like she did, she said, but he's now studying at Regis High School, one of the city's top private schools. He also wrote a book about his experience at the boarding school called "The Zeal in Youth" that was published last year, Li said.

"We know the importance to build a bridge and to build a platform for this hope, to cultivate and to nurture them," Li said.

(Lead image: Lily Li, left, poses with pianist Jiaxin Tian after a dress rehearsal for the fourth Chinese New Year Spectacular. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)