Ink Traces

Konstantinos Valianatos

Konstantinos Valianatos has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in North and South America, Asia, and Europe. As an award-winning musician, he won first prizes at the International Seiler Piano Competition, the International Ibiza Piano Competition, the Senigallia International Piano Competition, the San Gemini International Piano Competition, and the Aspen Music Festival Competition, among others. Valianatos was awarded many scholarships from Gina Bachauer, Yamaha, Onassis, I.K.Y., George and Marie Vergottis Foundation, and the Starr Foundation. He was honored by the President of Greece, Kostis Stefanopoulos, with the highest accolade from the Academy of Athens in Greece for his work and artistic integrity.

Chen Yi

As a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, Dr. Chen Yi is a recipient of the Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. She has been Lorena Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dance in the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2019.

Yao Chen

In works of various dimensions, Yao Chen seeks paths toward transcendence. His music, always ritual in nature, eschews contemporary vogues and instead aims at a timelessness and an otherness that exists beyond the standard categories — music for the moment, but also music for then and music for what lies ahead. Whether his work is brittle or forceful, or often both in coexistence, melancholy and a sense of wonder are recurring characteristics, as is an internationalist orientation grounded in a quest for maximal musical meaning. His perceptions on musical time, timbre, intonation, pulsation, and expression are always at frontiers: between the old and the new, between the East and the West, between irrational mysticism and rational logic. While devoting himself mainly to the field of contemporary art music, Yao also experiments with other genres, writing music for films and theater productions. Cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary concepts permeate his creative inspiration and compositional output, presenting his understanding of the value of new music in enlivening global cultures.

Sang Tong

Sang Tong (1923–2011), born Zhu Jingqing in Shanghai, was a renowned Chinese music educator, composer, and music theorist and is regarded as a key historical figure and driver of modern Chinese music history. He served as the president and professor of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Sang began his musical education in 1941 at the then National Music Conservatory (later Shanghai Conservatory), studying composition under the German composer Wolfgang Fraenkel, but paused his studies in 1943. In 1946, he continued his studies at the conservatory under Jewish Austrian composer Julius Schloss and attended classes taught by composer Tan Xiaolin. In 1947, Sang composed the violin piece Night Scene and the piano piece In That Distant Place, which were among the earliest attempts by Chinese composers to employ atonal composition techniques. He also collaborated with Qu Xixian on the film music for Nightclub and Sunny Days, conducting the recordings himself.

Pan Kai

Pan Kai (b. 1985) holds a Ph.D. in composition from Shanghai Conservatory of Music and is Associate Professor and Composition Graduate Supervisor at Hangzhou Normal University. He is also a member of the Composition and Composition Theory Society of Chinese Musicians Association and a member of the Hangzhou High Level Talent Special Support Program. His works have received funding from China National Arts Fund and have won awards in multiple important competitions. They have been published multiple times in core Chinese journals.

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Gao Weijie

Gao Weijie (b. 1938) is a Distinguished Professor at the China Conservatory of Music, a doctoral supervisor at Shanghai Conservatory, and a visiting professor at Yanbian University and University of Cincinnati. He serves as a member of the editor board of Chinese Music and Musicology.

Chen Gang

A key composing figure in contemporary China, Chen Gang was born in Shanghai in 1935. He first studied composition with his father Chen Ge Xin, followed by entry to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1955. In his final year of study at the Conservatory he wrote, together with He Zhan Hao, The Butterfly Lovers. The violin concerto became one of the most popular and best loved Chinese compositions ever, winning five Golden Record Prizes as well as a Platinum Record Prize. The Concerto has also achieved enormous international success. Many of his other virtuosic violin compositions are considered classics and are frequently performed in China. Chen is now a Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. In November 2017, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Chinese Golden Bell for Music.

Ma Sicong

Ma Sicong (1912–1987) was a violinist, composer, and music educator from Haifeng, Shanwei, Guangdong. He is regarded as one of China’s first-generation composers and performers and holds a significant position in the history of modern Chinese music. Ma began his music education at the age of 6 when he entered the Pui Ching Middle School attached to a church in Guangzhou. In 1922, his elder brother Ma Siqi, who had returned from France, gave him a violin, which became a lifelong companion.

Chen Yihan

Much of Chen Yihan’s music seeks for a convergence of different points in time and space, connecting the past to the future and bringing different corners of the world together in an abstract, poetic, and emotional way that transcends culture and epoch. His music is often a play of lines, space, and intensity in a calligraphic way, reflecting his cultural roots in the Chinese arts.