Music from China will bring a 90-minute program of traditional and contemporary music to URI’s Fine Arts Center tomorrow night.

Get ready for more Chinese music. After last weekend’s showing by the Ningbo Yue Opera troupe at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, a group of Chinese instrumentalists from New York will be performing at the University of Rhode Island tomorrow night.

The concert is being presented in conjunction with the URI’s fall honors colloquium, China Rising.

Music from China, which has been around since the mid-1980s, will be bringing a 90-minute program of traditional and contemporary music to URI’s Fine Arts Center. A half-dozen performers will be on hand, said Susan Chang, the group’s director and a bass guitarist.

Music from China, which performs mainly in the New York area, plays music that dates back to antiquity as well as contemporary tunes commissioned by the group. Two new works will be on the program, including one by a winner of the ensemble’s annual composition competition.

The group often mixes Chinese instruments with Western ones in some of the contemporary compositions, said Chang, who comes from Hong Kong. But tomorrow it will be using only traditional instruments. Those include the erhu, the two-stringed fiddle that is held upright in the lap; a hammered dulcimer or yangqin; the pipa or a pear-shaped lute; a 21-string zither known as a zheng, and two raun, or guitars.

Of those, said Chang, the erhu is probably the most ticklish to play. Unlike our own violin, it doesn’t have a finger board. Rather than press the strings against a wooden neck to create different pitches, the fingers stretch the strings. That makes it difficult to play, but also creates delicate ornaments that can mimic speech. For that is one of the hallmarks of Chinese music, said Chang, the imitation of vocal patterns by instruments.

Most of the members of the group grew up in China and studied their instruments there, said Chang. But there are a couple of players who were born here and learned their instruments under the guidance of Chinese masters.

The group plays primarily mainstream Chinese music that uses a seven-note scale not unlike our own Western scales. But there is also antique music that uses the traditional five-note scale.

Music from China appears tomorrow night at 8 at URI’s Fine Arts Center. Tickets are $15, $12 for seniors and $5 for students. Call (401) 874-2627.

cgray@projo.com