Zhou Long

Zhou Long ( Chinese  周 龍  /  周 龙 , Pinyin Zhōu Lóng , born July 8, 1953 in Beijing ) is an American composer and university professor of Chinese origin. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize of Music in 2011 .

life and work

Zhou Long took piano lessons at an early age. During the Cultural Revolution he worked on a farm. In 1973 he resumed his musical studies and enrolled there in 1977 after the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing reopened . From 1983 to 1985 he was composer-in-residence with the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra . In 1985 he moved to the USA and studied at Columbia University on a scholarship . His teachers there included Chou Wen-chung , George Edwards and Mario Davidovsky . In 1993 he graduated with a doctorate after taking over the artistic direction of Music from China in 1989 , a New York ensemble that performs concerts of traditional Chinese music.

Zhou Long's numerous awards include scholarships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Kussewizki Foundation , first prizes at the International Composition Competition d'Avray in France (1991, for Dhyana ) and at the BBC Masterprize Competition (1998, for Two Poems from Tang ) and in 2003 the Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 2011, Zhou Long received the Pulitzer Prize of Music for his first opera, Madame White Snake , which premiered at the Boston Opera in 2010 and was performed with the Bejing Philharmonic Orchestra in the same year . For 2012/13 he was awarded the 2-year Stoeger Prize .

Zhou Long holds a professorship for composition at the University of Missouri – Kansas City , as well as visiting professorships at Brooklyn College and the University of Memphis , as well as lectures and master classes in China and the USA. Zhou Long has been an American citizen since 1999 and is married to the composer Chen Yi .

Zhou Long's music combines instruments and ideas of Chinese tradition with contemporary western instrumentations and techniques. In addition to combining Chinese and Western instruments in some works for diverse, including large orchestral ensembles, he also experimented with electronics and wrote new music for traditional Chinese ensembles.

literature

• Joanna C. Lee:  Zhou Long. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).

Web links

• Biography, Oxford University Press (Engl.)
• Biography and works, The Living Composers Project (Engl.)
• Biography, pulitzer.org (engl.)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Zhou is the family name here, Long is the first name.