The Provisional Urban Council (PUC) and the Provisional Regional Council (Pro RC) will jointly present the Millennium Music Carnival at the Hong Kong Cultural Center on November 21 to mark the advent of the new millennium.

Organized by the Music Office, the carnival aims to arouse public's interests towards music, according to a spokesman for the PUC.

The multiple meanings of "reviewing the past", "demonstrating the present" and "expecting the future" will be threaded through a wide variety of entertaining programs to be staged at four different zones of various themes at the carnival, the spokesman said.

A multi-media exhibition "Millennium Retrospect" will be staged to review the development of music in the last one thousand years, he said.

Students of the Music Office will join other musicians to give live performances to demonstrate the development of both the Chinese and Western music in the past millennium.

The performances include Chinese Guqin, ancient classical Chinese singing, Chinese plucked string music, Beijing Opera, Renaissance and Baroque instrumental ensembles and choral selections from the 11th to 20th centuries.

Five hundred young local instrumentalists from Hong Kong Youth Symphonic Band, Music Office District Youth Chinese Orchestra, Hong Kong Youth Symphony Orchestra and Hong Kong Youth Chinese Orchestra will perform notable Chinese and symphonic compositions to exemplify the spirit of the century, the spokesman added.

Apart from "Music of Our Time", ethnic music will be performed at "International Platform" to demonstrate the cosmopolitan nature of Hong Kong, he said. (Xinhua)