Festival | THE HONG KONG DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL IN NEW YORK

The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival - A significant holiday celebrated in China and the one with the longest history. Colorful and lively, the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by a day of races in narrow boats shaped like dragons. Competing teams row their boats in sync with a furious rhythm pounded out by on-board drummers.

Event and Activity Schedule

10:00 am Lion Dancers open the festival and greet all.

10:30 am Chinese Music Ensemble of New York. Founded in 1961, it is the oldest and only full-scale Chinese orchestra in the United States and the Americas. Its present membership of nearly fifty musicians play practically every type of Chinese music on Chinese instruments, both ancient and modern. For the HKDBF-NY performance a small ensemble from the orchestra performs in repertory on traditional string, wind and percussions instruments.

11:00 am MIKE BLOCK BAND. Hailed by Yo-Yo Ma as the "ideal musician of the 21st Century", Mike Block is a pioneering multi-genre cello player living in New York City. While studying at the Juilliard School, Mike joined The Silk Road Ensemble as its youngest member, and upon graduation in 2006, also joined Grammy Award winner Mark O'Connor in his Appalachia Waltz Trio. Since then, Mike has become an internationally in-demand player in many musical genres as broad as American folk, contemporary & traditional old-time, jazz, Asian/American crossover, Classical and contemporary Arabic crossover and much more. Mike writes extensively for the Mike Block Band, and has also had his pieces performed at the Tribeca New Music Festival, and the MATA Festival.

Noon Edge. Fresh from the Vancouver International Jazz festival, this quartet , lead by composer and violinist Jason Hwan offers a rich blend of jazz and chamber music that seamlessly merges Eastern and Western traditions into a singular, global hybrid. Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet/flugehorn), Andrew Drury (drum kit), Ken Filiano (string bass), Jason Kao Hwang (composer, violin/viola).

1:00 pm Shaolin Kung Fu. monks from the Shaolin Temple perform martial arts. In the history of the Shaolin Temple, founded in 495 AD, generation after generation of monk generals and soldiers protected the temples from wars and riots of society.

2:00 pm Queens Theater in the Park Hours ( 2 - 5 PM) presented by "Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival in New York". Guitarist, composer and arranger, Hong Kong musician Simon Yu uses the influences of his traditional Chinese Musician family in his playing and compositions. His micro-tonal music mixers Chinese/Indian/Turkish micro-tonal systems with Western modern groove music.

Abdou Mboup. African Music: xalam percussion,kora, and vocal.
Abdou Mboup was born in the small town of Kebemer, Senegal to a family of oral historians and musicians. Having studied traditional drumming under the tutelage of his family, Abdou soon became a key figure in the development of the Mbalax style (Senegalese dance music).
R 3:00 pm Luca Mundaca is a gifted singer/songwriter whose sultry voice and memorable bossa nova and samba-fused melodies will take you to the heart of Brazil.

4:00 pm DJ Johnathan Jacobs' Time Machine show covers forgotten gems from the 30's through the early 70's.

ARTS & CRAFTS Tent:

20 artists will be demonstrating traditional Chinese crafts including: calligraphy, rice doll making, bead stringing, kite making, jeweled ornaments, ribbon flowers, paper cutting and much more. Children will be able to try their hand at making their own crafts.