Armchair travelers, rejoice! The Princeton Symphony Orchestra will offer a trip around the world this weekend. Book passage to Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium this Sunday at 4 p.m., as the orchestra embarks for Hungary (by way of Zoltán Kodály), Spain, Eastern Europe, and Amherst, Massachusetts (by way of Osvaldo Golijov), China (by way of Jing Jing Luo), and Bohemia (by way of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart).

The PSO continues its season-long celebration of the creativity of women with not one, but two notable guest artists. Dawn Upshaw will be the soloist in Golijov’s “Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra.” Singer and composer are frequent collaborators, with Upshaw frequently described as Golijov’s muse.

The PSO’s other notable guest is composer-in-residence Jing Jing Luo. Luo, a native of Beijing, is “a self-taught calligrapher in Chinese ink brush painting,” an art she says she has practiced since childhood.

The title of her work, “Tsao Shu,” alludes to “Chinese cursive writing, with ink brush, not with pen.” She elaborates, “The piece, it’s about the motion of the calligraphy with the ink brush, the motions of the stroke. Each stroke in calligraphy is reflected in music through the string section, percussion section, woodwind and brass.”

Luo will join PSO music director Rossen Milanov for a pre-concert talk on Sunday at 3 p.m. Milanov will conduct the program, which will also include Kodály’s “Dances of Galanta” and Mozart’s Symphony No. 38, the “Prague” Symphony.

On Saturday at 4 p.m., Luo will converse with composer and PSO board member Julian Grant about Chinese culture and its influence on her art and music. The discussion will take place at the Arts Council of Princeton’s Paul Robeson Center for the Arts. The Saturday event is free with ticketed reservations through the PSO website, princetonsymphony.org.

Read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/01/classical_music_pso_performing.html

PHOTO: Upshaw armchair traveling with Golijov