Orchestras across Australia are set to ring in the Year of the Rooster with programmes celebrating traditional Chinese music and complementary Western classical favourites.

In Melbourne, popular Chinese singer Tan Weiwei performs the world premiere of Song Lines, a piece she collaborated on with the contemporary classical composer and conductor Tan Dun. Dun is known for injecting Western music with Chinese musical traditions and mythical subject matter, and this concert reflects his eclectic spirit. He will conduct the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance from El Amor Brujo, Guan Xia’s 100 Birds Flying towards the Phoenix, Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919), and his own Concerto for Piano and Peking Opera Soprano Farewell My Concubine. Peking Opera soprano Xiao Di and pianist Ralph van Raat are featured in this tragic tale set during the fall of the Qin Dynasty.

Brisbane-born conductor Dane Lam will lead the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in a programme of Chinese music and Western favourites. Tan Dun makes an appearance on the programme with Eternal Vow, taken from his Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon concerto. Bao’s The Little Cowherd, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, Mendelssohn’s Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Yang’s The Shepherdess of...