FARMINGTON HILLS, MI, March 2026 — On Friday, April 24, 2026, the Michigan Philharmonic presents The Sounds of the Pacific Rim at The Hawk Theatre in Farmington Hills — a landmark evening of music, history, and culture featuring Xiao Dong Wei, erhu virtuoso, composer, and 2012 Kresge Fellow, performing Tan Dun’s celebrated score: The Crouching Tiger Concerto for Erhu and Chamber Orchestra, Galloping War Horses, and premieres her original composition, Hometown Reflections.
The concert also features Raion Taiko, from Great Lakes Taiko Center, whose Japanese taiko drumming brings one of the world’s most visceral ancient percussion traditions into the concert hall. Three distinct musical traditions — Chinese classical, Japanese percussion, and Western orchestral — meet as equals on a single stage, spanning two millennia of Pacific Basin musical heritage in a single unforgettable evening.
Program
o Ballata Sinfonica (1943) Akira Ifukube
o Crouching Tiger Concerto for Erhu and Chamber Orchestra (2000) Tan Dun
o Hometown Reflections (2025) Xiao Dong Wei (World Premiere)
o Galloping War Horses (1970) Yaoxing Chen
o Nocturne (1958) Colin McPhee
o Folkloric Dance Suite (1987) Kaoru Wada
“One way to think about Xiao Dong Wei is as the best kind of embodiment of our global age — partaking of any and every tradition that grabs her fancy, but never turning her back on her own cultural roots.”
— Mark Stryker, Music Critic · Detroit Free Press