Tan Dun (, ) (born August 15, 1957, Si Mao, Hunan) is a Chinese contemporary classical composer, most widely known for his scores for the movies ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'' and ''Hero''.

Early life in China

That, however, had little effect on his affinity for music. He created his own musical group, utilizing peasants in the village playing whatever they could, sometimes just banging on pots and pans. It was from these peasants that he began to learn to play traditional Chinese string instruments. He went on to play the viola for the Beijing Opera Orchestra.

It was from there that his escape from the agricultural commune came in the form of a government-sponsored touring company of the Beijing opera. When a ferry full of performers capsized near the commune, killing several of them, Tan was employed by the troupe and left the commune.

From there he went to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and studied with musicians such as Toru Takemitsu, who strongly influenced his musicianship and his sense of musical style.

Move to America

Musical style and compositions

For the official ceremony for the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, he was commissioned to write ''Symphony 1997: Heaven Earth Mankind'', for cello soloist (who was Yo-Yo Ma during the first performances), the recently unearthed ancient bianzhong bells, children's choir and orchestra.

In 1998 he was awarded The Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts by the Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1999 he was selected by the Glenn Gould Foundation as the recipient of the 1996 City of Toronto - Glenn Gould International Protégé Prize in Music.

In 2000 Tan, along with Sofia Gubaidulina, Osvaldo Golijov, and Wolfgang Rihm, was commissioned by Helmuth Rilling and the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart to write a piece for the Passion 2000 project in commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach. His contribution was the ''Water Passion After St. Matthew''. The piece was widely performed in Europe and was subsequently given its American premiere by the Oregon Bach Festival, also under Rilling's direction.

Tan's adaptation of the Chinese folk song Molihua (meaning Jasmine Flower), which he co-authored with Wang Hesheng, was played before, during and after each of the 302 medal ceremonies at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Tan described the piece as, "a gift from the Chinese people to the world's athletes."

In late 2006 Tan Dun premiered “Zen Shaolin” an outdoor production near Shaolin Temple in Henan, China.

In 2008, he was commissioned by Google to compose "Internet Symphony No. 1 'Eroica'" to be performed collaboratively by the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. That same year, he was commissioned by New York Philharmonic for Lang Lang to compose his First Piano Concerto, subtitled "The Fire".

Operas

Soundtracks

References

External links

Category:Columbia University alumni Category:21st-century classical composers Category:20th-century classical composers Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Chinese composers Category:Film score composers Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grawemeyer Award winners Category:American musicians of Chinese descent Category:Members of Committee of 100

Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Wu Man is known for her outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire but also recognized as a leading interpreter of contemporary compositions , as well as her work in jazz and cross-cultural music. Today’s most prominent composers including Terry Riley, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bun-Ching Lam, Evan Ziporyn, and many others have composed new works for her.

Wu studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where her instructors included Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai. She became the first recipient of a master's degree in pipa and won the first prize in the 1989 National Music Performance Competition.

Although educated in China, Wu came to the United States in 1990 at the age of 25. She lived in Boston for many years and now lives in San Diego, California with her husband and son.

Wu has performed and recorded with the Kronos Quartet, Henry Threadgill, Liu Sola, Martin Simpson, and Yo-Yo Ma's The Silk Road Ensemble, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra,the Philip Glass Ensemble, Wu Man & Friend series, and many other projects. In 1999, she became the first Chinese musician to play at the White House. She played there, together with Yo-Yo Ma, in honor of Zhu Rongji, the premier of China. Also In 1999, Wu was chosen by Ma to receive the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize in music and communication. The award consisted of a bronze statue of famous Canadian pianist Gould himself. In 1998 she was a first Chinese traditional performing artist selected as a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. In 2008 she was awarded a [United States Artists] Fellowship.

Discography

With Philip Glass

With Kronos Quartet

With Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle

With Martin Simpson

With Liu Sola

With The Silk Road Ensemble

With Henry Threadgill

Compilations

External links

Interviews

Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:Chinese composers Category:Contemporary classical music performers Category:People from Hangzhou Category:People's Republic of China musicians Category:Pipa players

Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955) is a French-born Chinese American cellist, virtuoso, and orchestral composer. He has received multiple Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts in 2001 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. Ma is regarded by some as the most famous cellist of the modern age.

Early life

At a very young age, Ma began studying violin, and later viola, before settling on the cello in 1960 at age four. According to Ma, his first choice was the double bass due to its large size, but he compromised and took up cello instead. The child prodigy began performing before audiences at age five, and performed for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower when he was seven. At age eight, he appeared on American television with his sister, Yeou-Cheng Ma, in a concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein. By fifteen years of age, Ma had graduated from Trinity School in New York and appeared as a soloist with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra in a performance of the Tchaikovsky ''Rococo Variations''.

Ma studied at the Juilliard School at age nine with Leonard Rose and briefly attended Columbia University before ultimately enrolling at Harvard University later on. Prior to entering Harvard, Ma played in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra under the direction of nonagenarian cellist and conductor Pablo Casals. Ma would ultimately spend four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival after meeting and falling in love with Mount Holyoke College sophomore and festival administrator Jill Hornor his first summer there in 1972.

However, even before that time, Ma had steadily gained fame and had performed with most of the world's major orchestras. His recordings and performances of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites recorded in 1983 and again in 1994–1997 are particularly acclaimed. He has also played a good deal of chamber music, often with the pianist Emanuel Ax, with whom he has a close friendship back from their days together at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

Ma received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1976. In 1991, he received an honorary doctorate from Harvard.

Career

Ma currently plays with his own Silk Road Ensemble, which has the goal of bringing together musicians from diverse countries all of which are historically linked via the Silk Road, and records on the Sony Classical label. Ma's primary performance instrument is the cello nicknamed ''Petunia'', built by Domenico Montagnana in 1733. It was named this by a female student that approached him after one of his classes in Salt Lake City asking if he had a nickname for his cello. He said, "No, but if I play for you, will you name it?" She chose Petunia, and it stuck. This cello, more than 270 years old and valued at US$2.5 million, was lost in the fall of 1999 when Ma accidentally left the instrument in a taxicab in New York City. It was later recovered undamaged. Another of Ma's cellos, the ''Davidov Stradivarius'', was previously owned by Jacqueline du Pré who passed it to him upon her death, and owned by the Vuitton Foundation. Though Du Pré previously voiced her frustration with the "unpredictability" of this cello, Ma attributed the comment to du Pré's impassioned style of playing, adding that the Stradivarius cello must be "coaxed" by the player. It was until recently set up in a Baroque manner, since Ma exclusively played Baroque music on it. He also owns a modern cello made by Peter and Wendela Moes of Peissenberg, Germany, and one of carbon fiber by the Luis and Clark company of Boston.

In 1997 he was featured on John Williams' soundtrack to the Hollywood film, ''Seven Years in Tibet''. In 2000, he was heard on the soundtrack of ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'', and in 2003 on that of ''Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World''. He collaborated with Williams again on the original score for the 2005 film ''Memoirs of a Geisha''. Yo-Yo Ma has also worked with world-renowned Italian composer Ennio Morricone and has recorded Morricone's compositions of the Dollars Trilogy including ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly''. He also has over 75 albums, 15 of which are Grammy Award winners. Ma is a recipient of the International Center in New York's Award of Excellence.

Ma was named Peace Ambassador by UN then Secretary-General Kofi Annan in January 2006.

On November 3, 2009, President Obama appointed Ma to serve on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. His music was featured in the 2010 documentary ''Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story'', narrated by Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman.

Playing style

Notable live performances

He performed John Williams' "Air and Simple Gifts" at the inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, along with Itzhak Perlman (violin), Gabriela Montero (piano) and Anthony McGill (clarinet). While the quartet did play live, the music played simultaneously over speakers and on television was a recording made two days prior due to concerns over the cold weather damaging the instruments. Ma was quoted as saying "A broken string was not an option. It was wicked cold."

On May 3, 2009, Ma performed the world premiere of Bruce Adolphe's "Self Comes to Mind" for solo cello and two percussionists with John Ferrari and Ayano Kataoka at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The work is based on a poetic description written for the composer of the evolution of brain into mind by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, and featured, at the premiere, a film of brain scans provided by Hanna Damasio plus other images, coordinated with the music during the performance.

On August 29, 2009, Ma performed at the funeral mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Pieces he performed included the Sarabande movement from Bach's ''Cello Suite No. 6'', and Franck's ''Panis Angelicus'' with Placido Domingo.

On October 3, 2009, Ma appeared alongside Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the National Arts Centre gala in Ottawa. Harper, a noted fan of The Beatles, played the piano and sang a rendition of "With A Little Help From My Friends" while Ma accompanied him on his cello.

On October 16, 2011, Ma performed at the memorial for Steve Jobs held in Stanford University's Memorial Church.

In 2011, Ma performed with American dancer Charles "Lil Buck" Riley in the United States and in China at the U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture.

Media appearances

He also starred in the visual accompaniment to his recordings of Bach's ''Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello''.

Ma was also seen with former Apple Inc. and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs. Ma was often invited to press events for Jobs's companies, and has performed on stage during event keynote presentations, as well as appearing in a commercial for the Macintosh computer.

Ma was a guest on the Not My Job segment of ''Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!'' on April 7, 2007, where he won for listener Thad Moore.

On October 27, 2008, Ma appeared as a guest and performer on ''The Colbert Report''. He was also a show's guest on November 1, 2011, where he performed songs from The Goat Rodeo Sessions with fellow musicians Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile.

According to research done by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of Harvard University, in 2010 for the PBS series ''Faces of America'', in which Ma made an appearance, a relative had hidden the Ma family genealogy in his home in China to save it from destruction during the Cultural Revolution. Ma's paternal ancestry can be traced back eighteen generations to the year 1217. This genealogy had been compiled in the 18th century by an ancestor, tracing everyone with the surname Ma, through the paternal line, back to one common ancestor in the 3rd century BC. Ma's generation name, "Yo", had been decided by his fourth great grand-uncle, Ma Ji Cang, in 1755.

Personal life

Discography

Awards and recognitions

References

External links

Category:American classical cellists Category:American classical musicians of Chinese descent Category:Contemporary classical music performers Category:Child classical musicians Category:Columbia University alumni Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:Emmy Award winners Category:French emigrants to the United States Category:French people of Chinese descent Category:Gemini Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Juilliard School alumni Category:Musicians from Massachusetts Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from Paris Category:Members of Committee of 100 Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:American people of Ningbo descent Category:United Nations Messengers of Peace Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:People from Belmont, Massachusetts