Xiaogang Ye

Ye Xiaogang is a contemporary Chinese composer known for combining traditional Chinese aesthetics with modern tonalities and textures. His expansive worklist includes vocal and orchestral music, and film scores. He was born in Shanghai in 1955 to a musical family. His father Ye Chunzhi composed music for Chinese films and theater, and his mother was a singer. Ye began studying the piano with his father when he was four years old, but his family faced financial difficulties during his childhood. His father’s career as a composer was struggling, partly due to his political affiliation with the communist party. As a teenager, he performed manual labor on a farm, and later he worked in a factory that produced sheet metal. During this time, he was only allowed to visit his home on the weekends. He wasn’t accepted into any music ensembles because of his father’s political association, but he practiced the piano when he visited his family. His situation improved when he was 23, and he became a composition student at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. There he studied with composer Du Mingxin, and he befriended classmates Tan Dun, Qu Xiaosong, and Chen Qigang. After graduating in 1987, he traveled to New York where he enrolled at the Eastman School of Music and received a full scholarship. While a student in New York, he composed Threnody, The Mask of Sakya, and The Ruin of the Himalaya, which won the Howard Hanson Prize in 1990. He finished his master’s degree in 1991, and he also won the grand prize in the First Orchestral Composition Competition of Taiwan. After returning to China in 1994, Ye began an appointment as a composition professor at the Central Conservatory of Music, and in 1995 he started working with music publisher Schott. In the 2000s he composed several large-scale works including the nine-movement Great Wall Symphony from 2002, and Starry Sky, which received its premiere at the opening of the Summer Olympics in 2008. His critically acclaimed “Story of China” concert series that began in 2013 featured some of his best-known works, including The Last Paradise, and The Song of Earth. It was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in many of the major concert venues worldwide. Ye has remained very active in the 2020s as a composer, educator, and cultural ambassador. In 2021 He became the founding dean of the School of Music at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His works have been recorded by several artists including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and the Bowling Green Philharmonia.
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