She said it was the first time that she had attended a Chinese folk music concert, but she would "absolutely" consider going to another one in the future.
Ritchie Vener, who was also among the audience, joked that he and his wife will consider going to Beijing next time to watch the show with all the multimedia elements.
The orchestra has already performed the program for about 30 times in cities across China. The contemporary tweaking with classic music pieces has enchanted many young fans back home.
However, many may wonder whether the modern composition still resonates with Western theatergoers, who are less familiar with traditional Chinese music.
"Our performance has gone down well with audiences in Washington. And we were surprised to find that half of the theatergoers are Westerners," said Liu Sha, the conductor of the program.
Meanwhile, Jiang, recalling their U.S. premiere in Washington on Dec. 11, said that at the end of the performance, all members of the audience stood up and refused to leave until they secured three encores from the ensemble.
Besides the "Rediscover Chinese Music" program, the 110-member orchestra also delighted U.S. audiences with another top-notch program, "Splendor of Folk Music," which was staged at the Lincoln Center on Friday.
The program featured seven orchestral works that are mostly based on ancient poems and prominent traditional Chinese instruments to showcase the diversity of Chinese folk music.
"I recognized the music. I mean the instruments are distinctively Chinese, but the melody, harmony and structure are common with Western classical," Sean Piccoli, a music critic working for New York Classical Review, told Xinhua after the Friday show.
This familiarity is "the greatest surprise of the performance," said Piccoli, who had described the concert as an "adventure" for him before the show started.
Piccoli is not alone in feeling the resonance.
On Wednesday, an event at Princeton University featuring a live "trailer" of the two programs drew about a hundred people from the university and local communities.
Keith Lane, a local resident, told Xinhua that he felt a sense of familiarity with the last work played by musician Feng Mantian on the zhongruan, an ancient Chinese instrument.
"I can relate it to a lot of modern music and the blues that I heard many years ago," he said. "Music is music. It can take down language barriers. Through music, you can get what the musicians are trying to express."
