MTSU’s Center for Chinese Music and Culture is welcoming spring with several events to celebrate Asian culture.

• Nancy Yunhwa Rao will speak about “Spectacle, Sound and Desire: Transpacific History of American Music” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 7, in Room S238 of the Business and Aerospace Building, 1642 MTSU Blvd.

This event, which is co-sponsored by the CCMC and the Center for Popular Music, is free and open to the public.

Dr. Nancy Yunhwa Rao

Rao, who is head of music theory at Rutgers University, will examine issues of equity and equality, racial representations, cultural migration and gender. She will discuss the networks and migrations that made Chinese opera a part of North American cultures, exploring issues of border crossing, visual emblems and the sounding of identity.

• The Chinese Ensemble of the University of North Texas will perform with the MTSU Chinese Music Ensemble at 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 27, in the T. Earl Hinton Music Hall of the Wright Music Building, 1439 Faulkinberry Drive.

This concert will follow an April 9 performance by the ensemble with the Chinese Music Club of the Western Kentucky University School of Music at WKU in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

“I have been working on this type of student exchange program for a long time, and this is definitely the right time,” said Mei Han, director of the MTSU Center for Chinese Music and Culture. “MTSU Chinese Ensemble has been growing steadily in the last seven years, and I have watched students change and grow from this music and cultural experience.”

Han is an internationally acclaimed concert artist on the zheng, a traditional stringed Chinese instrument that is played by plucking. Han teaches a weekend class on the instrument for the community at large.

Dr. Mei Han

“These students are mostly women and first-generation immigrants who have chosen Tennessee as their home in the U.S.,” Han said. “The center serves as a hub for them to remain connected to their cultural heritage. Learning a Chinese instrument helps them to gain confidence about their cultural identity.”

A campus parking map is available at http://bit.ly/MTSUParking. Off-campus visitors can obtain a one-day permit at https://mtsu.edu/parking/visit.php or park free in the university’s Rutherford Boulevard Lot and ride the Raider Xpress shuttle.

The MTSU Center for Chinese Music and Culture is located in the Andrew Woodfin Miller Sr. Education Center at 503A Bell St., Suite 1600. For more information, contact Han at 615-904-8121 or mei.han@mtsu.edu.

— Gina K. Logue (gina.logue@mtsu.edu)

MTSU Chinese Music Ensemble (MTSU photo by Cat Curtis Murphy)