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Harbin Is UNESCO’s Music City

Winter Highlights: China’s icy city Harbin is also a UNESCO’s Music City. Find out why.

Harbin is UNESCO Music City. Music Press Asia

Original press release

As this winter’s ice and snow festival is around the corner, the century-old Harbin Symphony Orchestra and Harbin Ballet have produced a large number of excellent plays to welcome this festival.

Harbin has been dubbed the “City of Music” by UNESCO, for good reason. Having developed for a century, music has become a unique icon of the city, where eastern and western music cultures meet and interact. Harbin is the venue of the China-Harbin Summer Concert, the longest-running musical event in China.

With the opening of Harbin as a commercial port and inflow of foreign immigrants in history, Western music was brought to this city and took root here. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Harbin has been leading the country in terms of music depending on its rich cultural deposits and solid industrial foundation.

Harbin’s music development also enjoys wide public support covering government agencies, factories and schools. Good singers and dancers can be found everywhere among ordinary people. Harbin is home to a large number of famous musicians whose names are remembered across the country, such as Jin Tielin, Li Shuangjiang, Fu Gengchen, Liu Xijin and Li Jian.

Harbin Music Park is UNESCO Music City. Music Press Asia
[Harbin’s Music Park is a prominent musical structure known worldwide]

Over the years, Harbin’s music performing market has been flourishing, with an endless stream of original musicals, classical operas, and concerts of works of northern minorities. Artists from troupes and universities have performed in Harbin Concert Hall, Harbin Old Synagogue Concert Hall and other performance venues all the year round.

At the same time, folk art groups are becoming increasingly active. Music groups formed by college students, professional musicians or music lovers are active on the campus stage, in various performance venues, and in the streets and lanes of Harbin.

Today, citizens and tourists can enjoy operas, dance dramas and ballet in Harbin Grand Theater, the top concert hall in China. At the Old Street Concert, the Modern Hotel Balcony Concert and the Central Street Music Tour, they can experience the open-air street culture with the most distinctive Harbin features.

Harbin music conservatory UNESCO Music City. Music Press Asia
[Harbin’s Music Conservatory]

To experience more diversified music art forms, you can also visit the New Harbin Concert Hall, Harbin Old Synagogue Concert Hall, Harbin Oriental Bolshoi Theatre, Sun Island Russian-style Town and Volga Manor, etc. It’s not easy to find a peer of Harbin in terms of music across the country.

It does deserve the title of “City of Music”.

Source: Information Office of the Municipal Government of Harbin


RELATED NEWS: Australia’s city of Adelaide is also UNESCO’s City of Music. Watch YouTube video here.

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