Choral Director Says Shen Yun Orchestra Is ‘Incredible’

COSTA MESA, Calif.—Shen Yun Performing Arts New York Company’s first night in Orange County’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts on Friday, May 6, had many happy viewers at intermission, among them Roxanne Oxley and her two daughters Andrea and Aubrey.

“We love it,” said Ms. Oxley. “The orchestra is incredible, the precision is so clean.”

Ms. Oxley is the choral music director at a high school in the Garden Grove school district, and has taught music for 24 years.

“It’s so good,” she continued about the orchestra. “The string instruments you can hear are just exactly together and all the different sounds from the percussion and all the different things.

“It’s different from Western music, but it’s really, really beautiful.”

The Shen Yun New York Company Orchestra is unique in that it uses both Chinese and Western instruments, creating a distinctive sound. The music itself is melodically inspired by Chinese music, but employs Western arranging styles, all to accompany the dance pieces that are a feature of the Shen Yun presentation.

The dance scenes portray different aspects of Chinese culture, from ancient times to today, in ways that Ms. Oxley found fascinating.

“The dancing, all the colors, all the costumes. But more than that, just the difficulty of the dance and how everybody’s so together, visually, it’s really aesthetic, and it’s wonderful to watch.”

The dances each involve many dancers, often moving in synchronized patterns. The main dance style is classical Chinese dance, which has developed in China over thousands of years, still relatively new to the West.

Also featured are Shen Yun’s award-winning vocalists who sing in Chinese with translated English subtitles projected on the backdrop.

“The thing that amazed me about both of them [singers] is their projection. I mean they stood there and just sang. There’s not all the microphones and all these acoustics. It was just the clear sound of their voices, and that again takes a lot of strength and breath support,” she said. “And they just stood up on stage and let it out. That was awesome.”

Her daughters enjoyed the show, too.

“The costumes are beautiful, too, they’re all amazing,” said Andrea.

New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts will perform in the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, May 6-8. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org