Ruo Huang (b.1976)

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’.

His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, LA Opera, and Seattle Opera.

His opera An American Soldier received its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 2018, and was named one of the best classical music events in 2018 by The New York Times. His opera M. Butterfly received its world premiere with the Santa Fe Opera in 2022. His future opera commissions will be for The Met Opera and the San Francisco Opera.

He served as the first composer-in-residence for Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam. Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976 – the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was opening its gate to the Western world, he received both traditional and Western education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. As a result of the dramatic cultural and economic changes in China in the 1980s and 1990s, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutosławski, to include The Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. Huang Ruo was able to absorb all of these newly allowed Western influences equally.

Huang Ruo is a composition faculty member at the Mannes School of Music in New York. Huang Ruo’s music is administered exclusively by European American Music Distributors Company (ASCAP).

www.huangruo.com