One Piano, Two Cultures

Young Steinway Artist, Kiu Tung Poon, has appeared as a recitalist and collaborative pianist on concert stages worldwide, and at venues and festivals including Tanglewood and Aspen in the United States, Wiener Konzerthaus in Austria, St Martin-in-the-Fields in London and the Great Wall of China in Beijing. Her solo playing was described as ‘lyrical and emotionally nuanced... displayed lyricism and virtuosity’ by the Woodstock Times. Her world première of Mark Morris/Samuel Barber’s Excursions with the Mark Morris Dance Group at the Tanglewood Music Festival received enthusiastic review in The New York Times and Boston Phoenix. Her release on Naxos, Digital Mist (8.559903), featuring works for violin and piano by George Tsontakis, Chen Yi and Sebastian and Nathan Currier, was noted as being ‘lively and authoritative’ (American Record Guide), having an ‘effective presence’ (The Strad), and ‘fresh, adventurous, and beguiling’ and ‘beautifully crafted and extremely sensitive’ (Fanfare). Kiu Tung Poon graduated from Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Texas at Austin with a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance. She currently teaches at her alma mater, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, as a lecturer in performance, and serves as the performance stream coordinator in the Department of Music.

Dr. Chen Yi, Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory, is a recipient of the Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Published by Presser, her music is performed and recorded worldwide. She holds degrees from Beijing Central Conservatory of Music and Columbia University, and has studied with Wu Zuqiang, Chou Wenchung, and Mario Davidovsky. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor in China.

Composer Huang Ruo has been lauded by The New York Times for having ‘a distinctive style’. His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls ‘Dimensionalism’.

Bright Sheng is one of the leading composers of our time, whose stage, orchestral, chamber and vocal works are performed regularly by the greatest performing arts institutions throughout North America, Europe and Asia. A MacArthur Fellow, Sheng has created an oeuvre with a strong synthesis of Western musical tradition which makes his work distinctive and original. Sheng himself admits: ‘I consider myself both 100% American and 100% Asian.’

The conceptual and multifaceted composer/conductor Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and eastern and western traditions. He is a recipient of today’s most prestigious honours including the GRAMMY Award, Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award for classical composition, Musical America’s Composer of The Year, Shostakovich Award and the Bach Prize of Hamburg, and his music has been played throughout the world by leading orchestras, opera houses, international festivals, and on radio and television. As a conductor, Tan Dun has led the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala and the Münchner Philharmoniker, among others. In 2010, he served as Cultural Ambassador to the World for World Expo 2010 Shanghai.

Composer Yao Chen has received commissions and awards from many international organisations including Radio France, Harvard University Fromm Foundation, Leonard Bernstein Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and China’s National Center for the Performing Arts. Performed by internationally renowned musicians and ensembles, his music has been enthusiastically received at prestigious music festivals such as ISCM World Music Days, Centre Acanthes, Festival Présences at Radio France, Tanglewood Music Festival, Juilliard School Focus Festival, Aspen Music Festival and Pacific Music Festival, among many others.

Zhou Long was born in Beijing in 1953. Following graduation from the Central Conservatory in 1983, he was appointed composer-in-residence with the China National Broadcasting Symphony. Zhou has received fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the Mary Cary Trust and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. He has been the recipient of commissions from the Koussevitzky and the Fromm Music Foundations, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, and ensembles around the world. He is the recipient of the 2003 Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. During the 2008–09 season, Zhou worked on a flute concerto for the California Pacific and Singapore Symphonies and a new chamber work for PRISM Saxophone Quartet with Chinese instruments, and he started his first opera, co-commissioned by the Opera Boston and Beijing Music Festival, which gave its première in 2010. He is a professor at the conservatory of the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His works have been recorded on many major labels, and his music is published exclusively by Oxford University Press.