Wang Guowei, Artistic Director, is a virtuoso in the Chinese two-string fiddle erhu, as a performer, composer and teacher. He has been hailed by critics as a “master of the erhu” and “an extraordinary performer”(New York Times).
Mr. Wang trained at the Shanghai Conservatory and was concertmaster of the Shanghai Traditional Orchestra before joining Music From China in 1996. As an international performer, he has appeared throughout the United States and Canada as well as China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, England, Belgium, Italy and Australia.
As a composer, Wang Guowei has expanded the lexicon for Chinese instruments in works like Sheng, a solo for erhu; Tea House for Chinese ensemble; Tang Wind, for Chinese instruments and Western orchestra, commissioned by the Multicultural Group; Two Pieces for Percussion Quartet: Kong – Wu commissioned by the Ethos Percussion Group; Two Plus Two for Chinese string trio and tape; Three Poems for Erhu & Small Ensemble; Lullaby for erhu, clarinet & piano; Songs for Huqin and Saxophone Quartet; and Leaving Home for erhu, piccolo & cello.
His classical and new-music collaborations have included the Virginia Symphony; PRISM Quartet; Ying and Shanghai Quartets, Music From Copland House; Ethos Percussion Group; Amelia Piano Trio; Third Angle New Music Ensemble; Present Music; Post Classical Symphony; DaCamera of Houston; Continuum; Brooklyn Philharmonic; and Princeton Symphony Orchestra. Crossing over into the jazz world, he has worked with Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Butch Morris and Kenny Garrett.
Mr. Wang has taught erhu and Chinese music at Wesleyan University, New York University, Westminster Choir College at Rider University and Williams College. He also founded and conducts the Music From China Youth Orchestra.
Visit Wang Guowei’s website at www.wangguowei.com.
Zhou Long, Music Director, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West. His creative vision has resulted in a new-music oeuvre that stretches Western instruments eastward and Chinese instruments westward, achieving an exciting and fertile common ground.
Mr. Zhou was born into an artistic family and began piano lessons at an early age. During China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, he was sent to a rural state farm, where the bleak landscape with roaring winds and ferocious wild fires made a profound and lasting impression. He resumed his musical training in 1973, and four years later enrolled in the first composition class at the reopened Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Following graduation in 1983, he was appointed composer-in-residence with the National Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra of China.
Zhou Long traveled to the United States in 1985 with a fellowship to attend Columbia University, where he studied with Chou Wen-Chung, Mario Davidovsky and George Edwards, receiving a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1993. After more than a decade as Music From China’s music director, he received ASCAP’s prestigious Adventurous Programming Award in 1999.
In 2011, Mr. Zhou was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his first opera, Madame White Snake. After this triumph, he was awarded the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2012-13 Elise L. Stoeger Prize for composition. For these and other works, High Fidelity magazine has praised him for “pioneering achievements of the highest order.” Zhou Long is currently Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance.
Susan Cheng, Executive Director, has maintained a life-long devotion to the promotion and development of Chinese music in the United States, founding Music From China in 1984. In addition to performing on yangqin (hammered dulcimer) and ruan (guitar), Ms. Cheng is an instructor, lecturer and workshop leader in programs for youngsters and adults.