Bright Sheng

Bright Sheng ( Chinese  盛宗亮 , Pinyin Shèng Zōngliàng ; born December 6, 1955 in Shanghai , People's Republic of China ) is an American composer , conductor and pianist of Chinese origin.

Sheng took piano lessons from his mother from the age of four. During the Cultural Revolution , he lived in Qinghai Province for seven years , worked at the provincial theater as a pianist and percussionist, and studied the music of the revolution. After the universities in China reopened in 1978, he studied at the Shanghai Conservatory. In 1982 he went to the USA and studied composition with George Perle and Hugo Weisgall and music analysis with Carl Schachter at Queens College of the City University of New York until 1984 . He received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in 1994 , where he studied composition with Chou Wen-chung , Jack Beeson and Mario Davidovsky . In 1985 he met Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood Music Center , who became his mentor and gave private composition lessons until his death in 1990. Since 1995 he has been teaching composition as Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor of Music at Columbia University.

Sheng's works include several operas, ballet music, orchestral works, and chamber music. From 1989 to 1991 he was composer-in-residence at the Lyric Opera of Chicago . It was here that his first opera, Song of Majnun , was written in 1992 in collaboration with the librettist Andrew Porter . This was followed by The Silver River, based on a libretto by David Henry Hwang (UA 2000) and Madam Mao (UA 2003), a portrait of Mao's wife Jiang Qing . As composer-in-residence of the New York City Ballet , he composed the ballet The Nightingale and the Rose for the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon .

Like his opera Madame Mao , his orchestral work H'un: In Memoriam 1966-76 (1988) also deals with the events of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Nanking! Nanking! —A Threnody for Orchestra and Pipa was commissioned for Christoph Eschenbach and was premiered by him in 2000 with the NDR Radiophilharmonie . Red Silk Dance , a capriccio for piano and orchestra, was premiered in the same year by Emanuel Ax with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Robert Spano . A portrait concert for Sheng was held at Carnegie Hall in 2003 , and shortly thereafter, Song and Dance of Tears , a concert for cello, piano, pipa and sheng conducted by David Zinman with soloists Yo-Yo Ma (on his Silk Road Project he was involved in from 1999 to 2003), Emanuel Ax, Wuman and Wutong premiered.

To mark the centenary of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra , Sheng composed Phoenix in 2004 based on a poem by Hans Christian Andersen ; the work was premiered with singer Jane Eaglen and conducted by Gerard Schwarz . The Shanghai Overture was created in 2007 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Shanghai Conservatory . As a composer for chamber music, he has worked with the Takasc Quartet , the Emerson Quartet , the Shanghai Quartet , the St. Petersburg String Quartet and the Daedalus Quartet , among others .

Web link

• Bright Sheng homepage

swell

• G. Schirmer - Musical Sales Classical - Bright Sheng
• University of Michigan - School of Music, Theater & Dance - Bright Sheng