Xiaogang Ye

The Chinese composer Xiaogang Ye came to worldwide attention when his piano concerto Starry Skies was given its world premiere by Lang Lang during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. Today, the 63-year-old Ye is among the most important and influential composers of his country. He is the vice president of the Central Conservatory in Beijing and the founder and artistic director of “Beijing Modern”, the largest festival for contemporary music in Asia. He is also a member of the Chinese Parliament, where he is responsible for cultural affairs. Ye was educated in his homeland and at the University of Rochester in the USA; his oeuvre includes symphonic works, chamber music for various formations as well as stage and film scores. In Das Lied von der Erde (2005) he set the same texts to music which Gustav Mahler hat set in German translations in his 1908 work of the same title. Further major works by Ye include Cantonese Suite (2005), Four Poems of Lignan (2011), Twilight of the Himalayas (2013) and Tianjin Suite (2016). Since 1993 Xiaogang Ye has divided his time between Beijing and Exton, Pennsylvania.