Artists' Fellowship - 2000
Music Composition
Artist Statement:
Born in Beijing, Zhou Long’s compositions have been influenced by traditional Chinese folk melodies as well as western chamber and orchestral music. In his sextet, The Ineffable, he uses both western and eastern instruments to explore the "abstract, unworldly and idealistic tendency in medieval Chinese thought." A work for orchestra was inspired by poems from the Tang Dynasty and focused on the merging of Eastern and Western cultures through music. His new Rites of Chimes employs an array of ancient Chinese instruments and will premiere at the Smithsonian with Yo Yo Ma on cello, as narrator, "tracing back to the musical silk road."
More about the Artist:
Zhou Long (b. July 8, 1953, Beijing) is internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West. Deeply grounded in the entire spectrum of his Chinese heritage, including folk, philosophical, and spiritual ideals, he is a pioneer in extensively transferring the idiomatic sounds and techniques of ancient Chinese musical traditions to modern Western instruments and ensembles. His creative vision has resulted in a new music that stretches Western instruments eastward and Chinese instruments westward, achieving an exciting and fertile common ground.
Zhou Long was born into an artistic family and began piano lessons at an early age. During the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to a rural state farm, where natural scenes of roaring winds and fierce wild fires made a profound and lasting impression. He resumed his musical training in 1973, studying composition, music theory, and conducting, as well as Chinese traditional music. In 1977, he 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. He came to the United States in 1985 under a fellowship to attend Columbia University and received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1993, having studied with Chou Wen-Chung, Mario Davidovsky, and George Edwards. After more than a decade as music director of Music from China in New York City, he received ASCAP's prestigious Adventurous Programming Award in 1999.
Zhou Long is currently Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music. In May 2002, he was Music Alive! Composer-in-Residence of the Seattle Symphony's "Silk Road Project" Festival with Yo-Yo Ma, supported by the ASOL and Meet the Composer. He has received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, as well as recording grants from the Mary Flagler Cary Trust and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. His awards include Masterprize (BBC, EMI, London Symphony) and the CalArts/Alpert Award, as well as winning the Barlow International Competition with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a Commission Award in 2002. He has been the recipient of commissions from Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, New York State Council on the Arts and NAFY. Among the ensembles commissioning works from him are the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Singapore Symphony, the New Music Consort, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Kronos, Shanghai, Ciompi, and Chester string quartets, and the vocal ensemble Chanticleer. Zhou Long's music has been published by Oxford University Press, and recorded on EMI, CRI, Teldec (1999 Grammy Award), Cala, Delos, Avant, and China Record Corporation.
A United States citizen since 1999, Zhou Long is married to the composer-violinist Chen Yi. It should be noted that Zhou is his family name and Long is his personal name, and thus he should be referred to as Mr. Zhou or Dr. Zhou.
Zhou Long also organized and led an Artists & Audiences Exchange event at Music from China, New York, NY, December 2001.
|
