Shanghai Symphony Orchestra's Landmark 2026 Tour Of New Zealand, Australia And Singapore
Founded in 1879, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is Asia's oldest orchestra and a driving force in shaping China's classical music landscape across three centuries. It is internationally recognised for its performance on the Oscar and Grammy-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack – a landmark moment in Chinese musical history. The Orchestra has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival.
The 2026 tour features works by two of China's most prominent contemporary composers: Elliot Leung, the youngest-ever recipient of the 2023 Huabiao Award for Outstanding Composer, and Qigang Chen, praised by The Guardian for achieving a 'sustained dialogue between Chinese and Western classical and cultural traditions.' These are presented alongside works by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, performed by celebrated soloists Jian Wang (cello) and Serena Wang (piano), who makes her Australasian debut.
A vibrant centrepiece of the program is Leung's Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours – an evocative ten-movement suite, with each piece inspired by a traditional Chinese dish.
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Music Director, Long Yu said: 'It is an honour to be embarking on this special tour with Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in March 2026. As Asia's oldest symphony orchestra, SSO has undertaken many important international tours throughout its 146 year history. This tour marks the Orchestra's return to Australia and New Zealand, in addition to its Singapore debut. Collaboration is at the heart of what we do at Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and we are glad to be sharing the stage with two internationally-acclaimed Chinese musicians for this tour – cellist Jian Wang and pianist Serena Wang – to perform a programme of Chinese and Western music. We are particularly looking forward to introducing audiences to Elliot Leung's symphonic suite 'Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours' - a work commissioned and premiered by SSO last year - in addition to Qigang Chen's piano concerto 'Er Huang', as they celebrate the profound depth of Chinese culture."
Bernie Haldane, Kaitohu Toi Artistic Director, Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival said: "We are honoured to welcome the world-renowned Shanghai Symphony Orchestra to Tāmaki Makaurau for this special New Zealand exclusive, in partnership with our esteemed colleagues in Australia and Singapore. This marks the first time in more than 25 years that an international symphony orchestra will perform in our city — a momentous occasion for our audiences and arts community. We're especially looking forward to sharing a selection from Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours, a piece that reflects Chinese culture through music — a powerful reminder of how music can connect us across borders and traditions."
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra CEO Richard Wigley said: 'The MSO has a long tradition of partnering with our orchestral friends and colleagues in Asia and beyond. It's wonderful to be able to present this tour of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra alongside co-presenters Sydney Opera House, Auckland Arts Festival and Singapore Symphony Orchestra. This will be a truly cross-cultural program showcasing the extraordinary history of Chinese musicians performing eastern and western compositions.'
Sydney Opera House CEO Louise Herron AM said: 'At the Sydney Opera House, we believe in the transformative power of creative collaboration. This tour from the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra is an opportunity to connect more deeply with the community around us and also with our friends across the region. It's been three decades since we've seen these formidable musicians in Sydney, and I'm looking forward to hearing them perform in our upgraded Concert Hall for the first time.
Kenneth Kwok, CEO of Singapore Symphony Group said: 'We are delighted to partner the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra on their tour of Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. This collaboration deepens the cultural ties between Singapore and Shanghai - two dynamic global cities with enduring connections. Long Yu has been a long-time friend of the SSO, and we warmly welcome him and the orchestra for their debut performance in Singapore. I look forward to hearing them at the Esplanade Concert Hall.'
The tour is organised by the award-winning classical music agency Askonas Holt, who have been bringing the world's greatest orchestras to audiences around the world for decades, and next year celebrate their 150th anniversary.'
The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra 2026 Program and Tour
AUCKLAND ARTS FESTIVAL
The Great Hall, Auckland Town Hall
Visit aaf.co.nz to join the waitlist for access to presale tickets.
Thursday 19 March 2026
Elliot Leung: Selections from ' Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours'
Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme (soloist: Jian Wang)
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No.1 (soloist: Serena Wang)
Friday 20 March 2026
Elliot Leung: Selections from ' Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours'
Qigang Chen: Piano Concerto 'Er Huang' (soloist: Serena Wang)
Rachmaninov: Symphony No.2
MELBOURNE
Friday 13 March 2026 – 7.30pm, Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Visit mso.com.au
Tickets from $81 + transaction fee, with $20 child tickets available
Patrons, Subscribers & Members pre-sale: Tuesday 22 July, 10am AEST
Waitlist pre-sale: Thursday 24 July, 10am AEST
General Public on sale: Friday 25 July, 10am AEST
Elliot Leung: Selections from ' Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours'
Qigang Chen: Piano Concerto 'Er Huang' (soloist: Serena Wang)
Rachmaninov: Symphony No.2
SYDNEY
Sunday 15 March 2026 – Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Visit sydneyoperahouse.com/classical-music/shanghai-symphony-orchestra
Tickets from $69 + booking fee
Insiders pre-sale: Tuesday 22 July, 9am AEST
What's On pre-sale: Wednesday 23 July, 9am AEST
General public on sale: Friday 25 July, 9am AEST
Elliot Leung: Selections from ' Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours'
Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme (soloist: Jian Wang)
Rachmaninov: Symphony No.2
SINGAPORE
Monday 23 March 2026 – Esplanade Concert Hall
Tickets from $30 + booking fee
Available from 19 September 2025, on sso.org.sg
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
3 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Aloud and in full colour
It might sound like Carol Hirschfeld but it's Shayne Carter's story, film-maker Margaret Gordon tells Tom McKinlay. In the opening frames of a new documentary, Shayne Carter walks along the Aramoana mole as if it were a runway. He's coming in to land, returning to Ōtepoti, back from the world. There he immediately meets the rough acclaim of the mole's resident seagulls - and curses right back. But it's an uneven contest, even for as practised a crowd wrangler as the Dunedin musician. No problem though, because the film jumps straight to Carter unleashed, wringing rawk high in feedback's most seaside registers from his leftie six string. Take that, you gulls. It's emblematic. As Life in One Chord chronicles, Carter seems to have had an answer always, to circumstance, to distance, to tragedy, to success. Life in One Chord is the work of journalist and documentary-maker Margaret Gordon - formerly of Christchurch, now of Melbourne - its title taken from the first vinyl release of Carter's very nearly all-conquering band Straitjacket Fits, a squalling '80s four-track EP that carried the propulsive She Speeds. This past week Gordon was applying the final touches to her film - crucially, making sure the sound mix does the material justice - ahead of its New Zealand International Film Festival release. The film's a musical biography, tracing Carter's trajectory from the hard-knock playgrounds of 1970s Brockville to the world stage and back again. It charts a course of approximate parallel to Carter's Ockham-winning memoir Dead People I Have Known, but welcomes in the perspectives of others involved in the various milieu that set him on his way or who travelled with him. And indeed, the book was part of her motivation for the film, Gordon says. "It really spoke to me, and I was like, it really needs to be painted in with all the bright colours, so when he talks about the bands or the people or the places that you can hear it and you can see it." So, alongside weaving in essential servings of Carter's rich songwriting catalogue - including some rare live footage - the film makes room for voices from his early life, home and school, and an extended cast of Dunedin Sound musicians. "The key people there would be John Collie, the drummer from Straitjacket Fits ... and also Natasha, Shayne's sister, which is important, because, you know, Shayne talks a lot about family," Gordon says. The film-maker's rule was that the people included had to be directly related to the story. The film follows Gordon's well received 2014 documentary Into the Void as another entry in the musical history of Te Waipounamu - the earlier documentary focused on the Christchurch band of the title. Music, bands, people interest her. "I think being in a band, it's a really ephemeral thing, isn't it?" she muses. "Like, it's very hard to exactly pinpoint what it is that makes it so special, but there is a certain kind of magic there that happens within that group of people and it's really the transmission of that through to the audience ... just that spark, in that moment, when that happens, where this group of people is doing something and this other group of people is there and they witness it and they feel it and they get engaged." So, not a straightforward phenomenon to distill, to capture, away from a gig's pulsing cacophony, but in her film, Gordon has a great ally. "Shayne's such a good talker," she says. "That was one of the things that I was really drawn to about him in terms of a documentary subject, you know, he has really great reflections on everything, really, and he has a lot of really great things to say, so that's really important. "He's a performer, too, and so that's really good. Like, it's not necessary, but it helps when you're making a documentary to be working with someone who's not afraid of a camera, someone who's OK to gather themselves together and put on a little bit of a show, which is most certainly what he did." Carter's on foot, in his own footsteps, through much of the film, from the mole to Brockville Rd, from his old high school to tracking down Straitjacket Fits' original broom cupboard George St practice room. It's a story of making your own fun. And Carter's created a lot of it. Still is in new and reinventing ways - he's now composing for the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Gordon wasn't familiar with all of it when she started into the doco. She'd joined the Carter fandom from about the Straitjacket Fits, following it on to Dimmer, but was learning about his earlier output with Bored Games and Double Happys. The formative story of the former plays out at what was Kaikorai Valley High School, Carter trooping back despite some misgivings. But as Gordon tells it, his reception there also pushes out the margins of the story to include a community's pride in the boy who did good. "You know, he said before we went back, he was like, 'oh, I didn't really like high school that much. I don't know how this is going to go'. "We came in and then before we'd even got into the office, you know, the deputy principal, John Downes, came out ... and then a couple of other people came out and everybody came out welcoming Shayne - really loved to see him back there." That sort of slightly revisionist remembering - back in the day the school's then principal stormed out of Bored Games' abrasive punk-inspired school hall performances - is joined in conspiracy by a Dunedin caught at its blue sky best. There's no sense here of the cold, suffocating grey that those Dunedin bands of the 1980s were trying to mitigate. Gordon admits to being a little bit disappointed Dunedin didn't deliver on its meteorological reputation. "I was like, 'oh, OK, this is making it look really good. Is this true? Are we really telling a true story here with all the sunshine?'." There is, though, plenty of shade in the story. Grim reality foreshadowed in the title of Carter's memoir. Gordon had some difficult material to cover, requiring sensitive handling. A striking element in the film is the tight knit nature of the community involved in Carter's shared story. Among the most prominent players is his Double Happys partner in crime, Wayne Elsey - another preternaturally talented friend from school, who was there for the pre-teen hijinks that became teenage kicks and rock and roll. The Carter-Elsey chemistry meant the Double Happys seemed destined for the sort of success Straitjacket Fits later achieved, but Elsey died in a touring accident. Gordon says they thought long and hard about how to handle that tragedy, integrate it into the story arc. "Because his passing was so tragic, it's still felt very strongly, it's still very raw within that Dunedin community. So, whatever we did, we had to be really careful about it and respectful." She knew Carter was not going to talk about it in an interview so that responsibility was picked up by Collie - drummer in both Double Happys and Straitjacket Fits - who grew up a stone's throw from Elsey's childhood home. And if anything more was needed from Carter, he'd addressed that responsibility already in his song Randolph's Going Home, a rawly heartfelt remembering that is afforded generous space in the film. For all Carter's showman inclinations, Gordon says she knew he was not going to be offering unlimited access to his inner workings. "He has a lot of self-protection, and I think that, you know, I always knew that he wasn't going to do a big interview where he would reveal all. "That's really not what he's like, and I did know that going in." That contributed to her decision to use passages from Dead People I Have Known in the film. "It's all there. All of that stuff is very, very real and very raw in Shayne's own words." However, in a genius twist, those words are read into the documentary by Carol Hirschfeld, the broadcaster's honeyed tones mixing equal measures of her straight-faced professionalism with the double-take comedy of delivering the punk rocker protagonist's own words in the first person. There's more pathos to come, beyond Elsey's passing, as of the original four members of Straitjacket Fits there's only two still standing, Carter and Collie. Bassist David Wood died in 2010, followed 10 years later by the band's other songwriter, Andrew Brough. Brough left the band abruptly in the early '90s just as they were about to go stratospheric and, while he found further critical success with his band Bike, had largely retreated from the world by the time he died. As a result, Gordon's interview with him is particularly affecting, as the bitterness previously reported about his departure from the band appeared to have receded. "It was interesting, because he was a lot warmer about his time in the band and a lot more circumspect about the band's demise than I thought he would be," Gordon says. "I feel like he'd come to a point where he still had a bit of grievance, but overall he was pretty much, you know, had accepted that it was what it was. "I wouldn't want to say that he'd moved on, but he wasn't fretting about it any more, that's for sure." As the documentary does at various other points, Brough's story acknowledges the well-observed tensions at the heart of the music industry and the price to be paid. "The music industry is always a strange one because it's got this unhappy marriage between creativity and money," Gordon says. "And those two things just don't really work well together." A lot of Dunedin bands would have been through the same grinder, she says, having been identified by the industry as bankable propositions. "And then, you know, all of that kind of influence starts creeping in and things become very difficult. And I actually think that's an underlying theme of the film." Adversity, character and resilience are foregrounded again in a chapter on Carter's role in supporting Dunedin Sound progenitor Chris Knox, following his debilitating stroke, in which the Enemy and Toy Love frontman delivers his own lesson in gritty defiance. Knox's determination seems to hold up another mirror to Carter's doggedness. Gordon confirms that was the story she found, but it was also the story she chose to tell. "You could have made a documentary and not talked about that, but for me one of the big things about Shayne that's really important and that is potentially unusual is that he really is resilient and that he just keeps getting back up and getting back to work again. And even though he's had to deal with some of the most difficult things that you could possibly imagine, including, being in a band and touring the world and then coming back to Dunedin - I mean, that's going to be tough. "It'd be tough for anyone. Especially because, you know, I don't think New Zealand is very good at having much empathy for people in that situation." The standard antipodean advice to such vicissitudes, absent of much empathy, would be to "get over it". Yep, true, Gordon says. "But, you know, that's exactly actually what he does. And so, yes, that theme of resilience, it really was something that we wanted to tell because I think it's very central to Shayne's story. "He's a resilient guy and amongst all of this difficulty and tragedy, he just continues on. He's an artist. He stays on the path." While Gordon's film will initially screen at the New Zealand International Film Festival, and perhaps beyond that in a conventional cinema format, she has other plans for it. "We're going to regroup and create, like, a different version of the film that has more music in it and that will have live incidental music and that will tour more like a band." Music documentaries aren't always huge box office draws at the cinema, she says, and, in a lot of ways, Life in One Chord is quite niche. It is, to a significant extent, one for New Zealand about New Zealanders. "So, we always wanted to have another plan so the film could have a second life where it could travel to, like, music festivals and arts festivals and things like that." It would be a longer show, incorporating live music. It would be doing things differently, appropriately enough. "One of the things about Shayne, he was, is and remains a punk and likes to do things his own way," Gordon says in summary. "And that was the way we did the film - 'this is how it is and we're going to do it the way that we want to do it, we are going to do it ourselves, we're going to do it our own way'. And that's how it ended up." Life in One Chord screens as part of the NZ International Film Festival at the Regent Theatre, Dunedin on August 16 and 19.
Scoop
8 hours ago
- Scoop
NZ Band Tadpole Announce New Single
Auckland, New Zealand – 1 August 2025: Multi-platinum rock trail-blazers Tadpole end a 19-year studio silence with 'George', a blistering reinvention of Headless Chickens' 1994 chart-topper. Reuniting with legendary producer Malcolm Welsford —who helmed both Tadpole's seminal albums The Buddhafinger and The Medusa, as well as the original 'George' sessions— the band fuse hook-heavy riffs with cutting-edge production—proving they remain a vital force in Aotearoa rock. Taking the track's sonic punch to the next level, mastering duties were entrusted to Ted Jensen of Sterling Sound. The Grammy-winning engineer—whose credits include Green Day's American Idiot, Evanescence's Fallen, Deftones' Around the Fur and Pantera's Far Beyond Driven —brings his trademark clarity and stadium-ready impact to Tadpole's modern spin on a Kiwi classic. The single follows Tadpole's triumphant 2024 reunion, which reignited fans across the country and introduced powerhouse vocalist Lauren Marshall to the line-up—signalling a bold new chapter for the near-triple-platinum outfit. Lauren Marshall (vocals): 'Recording George has been an exciting experience for me, as it's the first song I've been a part of with the band. Collaborating on such an iconic Kiwi track as my introduction to this new era of Tadpole has been special. I'm grateful to be working with such an awesome team and putting my mark on our version. It's been cool to learn and grow through the process—George has been a massive part of Tadpole's musical history, and I'm looking forward to this next part of the journey!' Chris Yong (guitar): 'We've loved playing George since our early days. Recording it now feels like both a tribute and a statement that Tadpole is fully switched on in 2025.' Malcolm Welsford (producer/mixer): 'Getting back in the studio with Tadpole to record George was electric. There's a real power in returning to rock production with a band that helped define the scene—and hearing that energy come alive again was something special. This track is raw, urgent, and unmistakably Tadpole.' WHY 'GEORGE'? Originally released as a double A-side with 'Cruise Control,' Headless Chickens' 'George' spent four weeks at No. 1 on the New Zealand singles chart and remains a cornerstone of the nation's alternative canon. Tadpole's 2025 version sharpens the song's menacing groove with razor-edged guitars, Marshall's soaring vocal, and Jensen's high-definition master—bridging 1990s alt-rock attitude with modern studio muscle. LOOKING AHEAD 'George' is the first taste of new material leading into the 25th-anniversary celebrations of The Buddhafinger later this year—promising more singles, festival dates, and surprises from one of NZ rock's most storied names.
Otago Daily Times
19 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
How a local TV station became a global powerhouse
By Eva Kershaw for Frank Film It's hard to compare Dunedin to Hollywood. However, for four decades, the small, academic city in New Zealand's deep south was home to a powerhouse of global documentary filmmaking. Born in Dunedin's TVNZ studios in the 1970s, Natural History New Zealand – known globally as NHNZ – developed from a government-run unit to an Emmy Award-winning international producer, reflecting not only the growth of an industry, but the evolution of New Zealand's place in global media and the emergence of a strong conservation movement. One of the unit's earliest series followed the critically endangered Chatham Island black robin out of extinction. There were only seven birds left. 'We came in at exactly the right moment to start telling these stories of hope,' says former frontperson Peter Hayden, 'and the audiences around New Zealand loved it.' It was new territory. Dunedin TV was known for children's programme production. TV audiences were not used to seeing their own natural environment on screen; and natural history was virtually unknown. Hayden, now 76, began working for TVNZ's Natural History Unit in 1980. 'Coming down here I thought I'd better go and buy a bloody book about natural history,' he tells Frank Film. 'I went to the Heinemann's Bookshop... and there was no such thing as a natural history section. 'That reflected the knowledge of New Zealanders at the time. We knew nothing.' On the team with Hayden were producer/director Neil Harraway, film-makers Rod Morris and Max Quinn, and the charismatic and committed Dunedinite, managing director Michael Stedman. '[Michael] was our leader,' says Harraway. 'Quite a stroppy little guy.' Using the hidden camera as a 'silent witness' to the natural world, the team put together personable documentaries of the wildlife of Aotearoa: rare footage of takahē and kākāpō, films on bats, sharks, locusts and a range of birdlife. In looking for a logo, they hit upon the kea, chosen for its intelligence, inquisitiveness, and adaptability – critical traits, says Hayden, for the company's survival. From 1981 until the early '90s, what was then called the Natural History Unit produced Wildtrack – a nature programme for both children and adults that won the Feltex Television Award for the best children's programme, three years running. In 1989, the unit produced Under The Ice, the first nature documentary to be filmed under the Antarctic sea ice. 'I don't know what we were thinking,' says Harraway. Under-water camera housing units were yet to be commercially available, 'so some of the local geeks climbed on in and whipped stuff up like this,' says former NHNZ technician Wayne Poll, gesturing to an early model unit kept in the basement of the company's Dunedin offices. Despite NHNZ's ingenuity, television was changing, and production in New Zealand was migrating largely to Auckland. In 1991, TVNZ closed its Dunedin studios. While the Natural History Unit escaped closure, its future was uncertain. Undeterred, Stedman began looking for new funding relationships overseas. Harraway recalls him picking up business cards from the floor and out of waste baskets at a Cannes event. 'Darwin said, it's not going to be the strongest or the most intelligent animal that survives on the planet, it's going to be the most adaptable,' says Morris. 'Michael sort of understood that intuitively, really, that adaptation was where survival of the unit rested.' And adapt they did. In 1992, in an early co-production with Discovery and Rai3, NHNZ produced the Emperors of Antarctica documentary – a pioneering film on Emperor penguins. 'I think Emperors of Antarctica sold to over 100 different territories around the world,' says Quinn, who devised a hand-made cover to insulate the moving parts of his camera in Antarctica's sub-50 degree temperatures. In 1997, the Natural History Unit was purchased by Fox Television, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch 'brought a bucket of money,' says Morris, and supplied the team with funding for equipment they desperately needed. Stedman forged co-productions in the USA, Europe, Japan, and China. As a fan of science communication, he helped build a post-graduate diploma in natural history film making at the University of Otago. 'We were into science, we were into health, we were into adventure,' says Hayden. As Stedman said in a 2001 TVNZ interview, NHNZ focussed on reading the market in order to make programmes that would appeal to their audiences, 'as opposed to a British system where they would make a programme that they wanted to make and then go and look for a market for it.' At its height, NHNZ had $50 million worth of documentaries in production. It was working on up to 20 films at any one time and employed 200 people. 'When it started, there was about five of us,' recalls Hayden. New Zealand was a hard audience to break into. 'I don't think New Zealanders were seeing a lot of these programmes,' says Hayden. 'I remember Michael saying, you know, you're selling to so many countries, but one of the hardest countries to sell to is your own country.' Internationally, NHNZ's reputation shone. Among numerous other awards, the company's films earned multiple Emmy nominations, and won Emmy awards in 1999 and 2000. In 2011, Stedman's health declined. 'The golden years were over,' says Morris. 'From Fox buying us in 1997, those fantastic years of growth and spreading its wings had sort of got to the end of its road,' says Harraway. 'The market had changed from the good film-making we liked. Reality kind of took hold.' Stedman resigned in 2013, and in the decade following, NHNZ scaled down. In 2022, a much smaller NHNZ was sold to Auckland-based Dame Julie Christie. With the company re-branded to NHNZ Worldwide, just three staff remain in Dunedin. With this month marking three years since Stedman's death in 2022, the original NHNZ team gather around a TV unit, watching a video of Stedman giving a speech. 'It sort of brings the dear old man back to life again,' says Quinn. 'He was an extraordinary person,' says Morris. 'He sponsored us for a period of time so that we could fulfil our dreams.'
