HOUSTON—“Fantastic. It was large, it was dramatic, and it was just emotional,” said Judith Vincent, a company executive, during the intermission of the Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra performance at the Jones Hall for the Performing Arts in Houston, Sunday night.

“It just evokes several emotions from you whether it’s highs or lows,” said Ms. Vincent, who attended the performance with friends, business managers Mr. Paul Jones and Mrs. Renee Jones.

Ms. Vincent was impressed with the expanse of sounds Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra brought forward while combining sounds of the East and West.

“I loved the Eastern instruments, the Eastern instruments from Asia with the Western instruments—I thought it was gorgeous. I thought the sound was gorgeous,” Ms. Vincent said.

“I thought it was very smooth, there was nothing that was discord, it was smooth and it fits together,” Mr. Jones said of the sounds. “I liked the variety, there’s a lot of variety in the music. There’s European, there’s Eastern, and there was even more.”

Instruments like the Chinese pipa and erhu are blended into a full Western symphony orchestra, performing original pieces like “Creation” composed by Jing Xian and conducted by Ken-Wei Kuo.

Trained in Western and Chinese music, Keng-Wei Kuo has conducted music of a broad range of styles from the Western and Chinese traditions. Mr. Jones found Kuo’s conducting to be dynamic and was excited by the pieces he conducted.

“I thought the orchestra snapped to when he came, to do art, and it was even more dynamic and precise,” Mr. Jones said.

“It’s expansive, and it’s very passionate,” Ms. Vincent said of the performance.

Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra is on a seven-city tour with performances in Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, from Sept. 27–Oct. 22. For more information, visit Symphony.Shenyun.com