National Palace Museum to celebrate Dragon Boat Festival with flute concert

Taipei, June 9 (CNA) The National Palace Museum (NPM) will hold a free flute concert at its main branch in Taipei on June 19 to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, one of major traditional Chinese festivals in Taiwan.

The program will feature musical arrangements inspired by summer blooms, as well as a rendition of the Taiwanese folk song "White Peony" (白牡丹), the museum said in a statement released Tuesday.

The concert, scheduled to begin at 3 p.m., will also feature the Joueurs de Flûte Ensemble, which will perform the first movement of its Fiction Suite (虛構小說組曲). The work earned the group the Best Performance Award in the Music category at the 35th Golden Melody Awards for Traditional Arts and Music, according to the NPM.

The ensemble will also play a flute jazz quintet adapted from nostalgic jazz pieces, the museum said.

The Dragon Boat Festival is traditionally associated with the Chinese patriotic poet Qu Yuan (屈原, c. 339-278 BCE), who, according to legend, drowned himself in the Miluo River as the Kingdom of Chu faced imminent collapse during China's Warring States period (475-221 BCE).

To commemorate Qu Yuan, the NPM is presenting the exhibition "Splendor: Cultural Imagery of the Chuci and the Dragon Boat" through June 21. This explores the Songs of Chu (楚辭), an anthology of poetry first compiled in the 2nd century CE that contains works attributed to Qu Yuan and other poets of the period.

The exhibition also showcases the historical context of Qu's life and the enduring influence of his legacy.