Jindong Cai joined the Stanford faculty in 2004 as the first holder of the Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies Chair. He has held positions as assistant conductor with the Cincinnati Symphony and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, working closely with conductors Jésus López-Cobos, Erich Kunzel, and Keith Lockhart. He led the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra on a successful concert tour to Portugal, the only American orchestra invited to participate in the Cultural Festival of World Expo 1998 in Lisbon. He has also served on the faculties at Louisiana State University, the University of Arizona, the University of California at Berkeley, and the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati.

Mr. Cai has received much critical acclaim for his orchestral and opera performances. In 1992, his opera conducting debut took place at Lincoln Center's Mozart Bicentennial Festival in New York, when he appeared as a last minute substitute for the world premiere of a new production of Mozart's Zaide. The New York Times described the performance as "one of the more compelling experiences so far offered in the festival." Mr. Cai has guest conducted the Arkansas Symphony, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Louisiana Philharmonic, the Lexington Philharmonic, the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, and the Tucson Symphony, among others.

Mr. Cai maintains strong ties to his homeland and guest conducts several top orchestras in China including the China National Broadcasting Symphony, the National Opera and Ballet Theater of China, the Shanghai Symphony, and the Shanghai Broadcasting Symphony. In 1997, he conducted the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in the Chinese premiere of John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 - the first major contemporary American work ever performed in that country.

Mr. Cai has twice won the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. He has recorded for Centaur Records and Vienna Modern Masters. His recording with the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra, which contains music by William Grant Still and other African-American composers, was reviewed as "a startling album, both for its professionalism and its sonic excellence" and was widely broadcast on National Public Radio.

Born in Beijing, Mr. Cai received his early musical training in China, where he learned to play the violin and piano. He came to the United States in 1985 and did his graduate studies at the New England Conservatory and the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. In 1989, he was selected to study with famed conductor Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center, and won the Conducting Fellowship Award at the Aspen Music Festival in 1990 and 1992.

Together with his wife, Sheila Melvin, Mr. Cai has co-authored several New York Times articles on the performing arts in China and a new book, Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese.

Multi-percussionist Haruka Fujii has become one of the most prominent solo percussionists and marimbists of her generation. She has won international acclaim for her interpretations of contemporary music, having performed premieres of works from composers including Franghis Ali-Zadeh, Akira Miyoshi, and Maki Ishii. She has frequently collaborated with composer Tan Dun, performing his Water Percussion Concerto, Paper Percussion Concerto, and opera Tea in major venues across the world.

Ms. Fujii's passion for introducing audiences to new percussion music has put her on stage with diverse orchestras and ensembles. She has appeared as a soloist with the Munich Philharmonic, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Nationale de Lyon, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. She is a member of Flexible Music and the Line C3 Percussion Group, two New York based ensembles which actively commission new compositions from young composers. Her world premiere recordings can be found on the Kosei, ALM Records, and Deutsche Grammophon labels. In addition to her career as a performing artist Ms. Fujii enjoys teaching, and has been a guest instructor and competition judge at several percussion festivals.

Born in Saitama, Japan, Ms. Fujii began her musical studies on the piano at the age of three. Influenced by her mother, noted marimbist Mutsuko Fujii, she developed interest in percussion instruments. She studied music at the Tokyo National University, the Juilliard School (where she was recipient of the Avedis Zildijian Scholarship Award), and the Mannes College of Music. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Ms. Fujii proudly endorses Korogi Marimbas.

Jiebing Chen has been hailed as one of the foremost erhu virtuosos in the world. Her world-renowned is based on her mastery of the classical Chinese repertory for the erhu and for her award-winning contemporary innovations using the two-stringed instrument.

Chen's incredible musicality and interpretive skills have resulted in overwhelming international acclaim as a solo interpreter of her instrument. Beyond that, with Chinese, American and European orchestras Chen was the first to bring the erhu into the symphonic concert hall, performing as a featured soloist. Her playing brought a new sound and excitement to classical music audiences. Perhaps most compelling are her achievements as a cross-cultural performer. Chen has virtually reinvented the erhu for the 21st century, performing in partnership with some of the most notable jazz and world music artists of our time. Her artistry has made her the most recorded erhu artist in the world with over 20 CD titles available internationally. In addition to her classical repertory Chen's work received a Grammy-nomination for Best World Music Album for her jazz improvisations with Bela Fleck and Vishwa Bhatt.

Jiebing Chen's career is still unfolding. Her horizons seem limitless. Chen's virtuosity and approach to the possibilities of her instrument continue to be groundbreaking, inspirational and delightful.

David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Jeffrey Zeigler, cello

For more than 30 years, the Kronos Quartet—David Harrington, John Sherba (violins), Hank Dutt (viola) and Jeffrey Zeigler (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 40 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world's most eclectic composers and performers, and commissioning hundreds of works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos' work has also garnered numerous awards, including a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and "Musicians of the Year" (2003) from Musical America.

Kronos' adventurous approach dates back to the ensemble's origins. In 1973, David Harrington was inspired to form Kronos after hearing George Crumb's Black Angels, a highly unorthodox, Vietnam War-inspired work featuring bowed water glasses, spoken word passages, and electronic effects. Kronos then began building a compellingly diverse repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartók, Shostakovich, Webern), contemporary composers (Aleksandra Vrebalov, John Adams, Alfred Schnittke), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk), and artists from even farther afield (rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Azeri vocalist Alim Qasimov, avant-garde saxophonist John Zorn).

Integral to Kronos' work is a series of long-running, in-depth collaborations with many of the world's foremost composers. One of the quartet's most frequent composer-collaborators is “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, whose work with Kronos includes the early Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector; Cadenza on the Night Plain and Salome Dances for Peace; 2002's Sun Rings, a multimedia, NASA-commissioned ode to the earth and its people, featuring celestial sounds and images from space; and, most recently, The Cusp of Magic, commissioned in honor of Riley's 70th birthday celebrations in 2005 and recorded and released in 2008. Kronos commissioned and recorded the three string quartets of Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, with whom the group has been working for nearly 20 years.  The quartet has also collaborated extensively with composers such as Philip Glass, recording his complete string quartets and scores to films like Mishima and Dracula (a restored edition of the Bela Lugosi classic); Azerbaijan's Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, whose works are featured on the full-length 2005 release Mugam Sayagi: Music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; Steve Reich, whose Kronos-recorded Different Trains earned a Grammy; Argentina's Osvaldo Golijov, whose work with Kronos includes both compositions and extensive arrangements for albums like Kronos Caravan and Nuevo; and many more.

In addition to composers, Kronos counts numerous artists from around the world among its collaborators, including the Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man; legendary Bollywood "playback singer" Asha Bhosle, featured on Kronos' Grammy-nominated CD, You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman's Bollywood; Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq; Mexican rockers Café Tacuba; genre defying sound artist and instrument builder Walter Kitundu; the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks; renowned American soprano Dawn Upshaw; and the unbridled British cabaret trio, the Tiger Lillies. Kronos has performed live with the likes of icons Allen Ginsberg, Zakir Hussain, Modern Jazz Quartet, Tom Waits, David Barsamian, Howard Zinn, Betty Carter, and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings by such diverse talents as Nine Inch Nails, Amon Tobin, Dan Zanes, DJ Spooky, Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Rokia Traoré, Joan Armatrading and Don Walser.

Kronos' music has also featured prominently in other media, including film (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, 21 Grams, Heat, True Stories) and dance, with noted choreographers such as Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and Eiko & Koma setting pieces to Kronos' music.

The Quartet spends five months of each year on tour, appearing in concert halls, clubs, and festivals around the world including BAM Next Wave Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Barbican in London, WOMAD, UCLA's Royce Hall, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Shanghai Concert Hall and the Sydney Opera House. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging on disc. The ensemble's expansive discography on Nonesuch Records includes collections like Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers, which simultaneously topped Billboard's Classical and World Music lists; 2000's Kronos Caravan, whose musical "travels" span North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East; 1998's ten-disc anthology, Kronos Quartet: 25 Years; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy–nominated celebration of Mexican culture; and the 2003 Grammy-winner, Alban Berg's Lyric Suite.

Kronos' recording and performances reveal only a fraction of the group's commitment to new music.  As a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, the Kronos Quartet/Kronos Performing Arts Association has commissioned more than 600 new works and arrangements for string quartet.  Music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Kronos have released sheet music for three signature works, all commissioned for Kronos, in the first volume of the Kronos Collection, a performing edition edited by Kronos. The quartet is committed to mentoring emerging professional performers, and in 2007 Kronos led its first Professional Training Workshop with four string quartets as part of the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall.  One of Kronos' most exciting initiatives is the Kronos: Under 30 Project, a unique commissioning and composer-in-residence program for composers under 30 years old, launched in conjunction with Kronos' own 30th birthday in 2003. By cultivating creative relationships with such emerging talents and a wealth of other artists from around the world, Kronos reaps the benefit of 30 years' wisdom while maintaining a fresh approach to music-making inspired by a new generation of composers and performers.

Yinam Leef grew up in a cultural melting pot, where East meets West, old and new coexist, and local and universal aesthetics are apparent at a change of glance. While firmly rooted in Western musical tradition, Leef has combined in his music certain elements that are particular to the Middle-Eastern sound-environment: melodic fragments, rhythmic or temporal aspects of music, and the relation to time and form. Thus in his works, complex harmonies may live side by side next to long pedal tones and irregular, jazzy rhythms next to timeless melismas. When honoring him with the Prime Minister Prize for Composers in 1993, the jury described him as a "native of Jerusalem, that 'Place of Fire,' according to poetess Zelda, which recurs in his works... Word and sound, longing and protests, Canaanite spirit and academic ivory towers have all combined to constant motion that has in recent years gathered momentum, power, and massiveness, when extended orchestral works have augmented the already-existing corpus of chamber and solo compositions. The integration of Eretz-Israeli roots with characteristically Western patterns of composition lends Yinam Leef's works both their concertantic-expressive nature and their polished crystallinity."

Leef's creative work has received critical acclaim and won numerous awards. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described his music as "attractive, colorful, and richly expressive," while the Luxemburg Wort called his Symphony No. 2 "a most beautiful and unconventional work." The Jerusalem Post simply labeled his Threads of Time and Distance "a masterpiece." His Violin and Viola Concerti have both received the ACUM Prizes, and his haunting vocal work, A Place of Fire, received a Citation of Honor from the City of Haifa. In 1993, he received the Prime Minister Prize for Israeli Composers. Leef has received commissions from prestigious organizations such as the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Mannheim Society for New Music, the Swarthmore Music and Dance Festival, the Jerusalem and Haifa Symphony Orchestras, the Israel Sinfonietta, the Israel Camerata Jerusalem, and numerous performing organizations in Israel and abroad. His works have been heard in most European countries, the U.S.A., and the Far East and have enjoyed frequent performances in festivals worldwide, including the Tanglewood Music Festival, Israel Festival Jerusalem, Pittsburgh International Music Festival, the ISCM World Music Days in Hong Kong and Oslo, Musical Spring in St. Petersburg, Poland's Wratislavia Cantans, and "The Old Testament in the Arts" Festival in Prague. All major Israeli orchestras have performed his works, and among the other ensembles that have featured his compositions are Philadelphia's Orchestra 2001, New York New Music Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Penn Contemporary Players, Ensemble Musica Viva Dresden, Notabu Ensemble für Neue Musik Düsseldorf, The Ridge and Colorado String Quartets, and the Swedish Radio Choir. His works are published by the Israel Music Institute (IMI) and Theodore Presser Company, and have been released on CD by the Angel, MII, and JMC labels.

Yinam Leef has always found immense satisfaction in the artistic and human interaction between composer and performer. He also sees great importance in his pedagogical work, transcending those universal aesthetic values he received from his own teachers — Kopytman, Wernick, Rochberg, Crumb, and Berio — and encouraging young talents in composition to find their own individual voices. He has taught at Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges, Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, and the New School of Music. He is an Associate Professor at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where he has also served as Dean of Students (1990-1994) and Chairman of the Department of Composition, Conducting and Theory (1995-1997, 2003-present). He was a guest composer at the Berlin Hochschule der Kunste and Conservatorium Maastricht, and Guest Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

After studying piano and composition in her native Korea, Hyo-shin Na came to the U.S. in 1983 to do graduate work at the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Colorado, where she received her doctorate. After moving to San Francisco in 1988, she met Cage, Rzewski, Wolff, and Takahashi, and encountered the music of Nancarrow. At the same time, she made return trips to Korea to hear and study traditional Korean music while also taking a broad interest in the music of other regions of Asia.

Hyo-shin Na has written for Western instruments and traditional Korean instruments and has written music that combines Western and Asian (both Korean and Japanese) instruments and ways of playing. Her music for traditional Korean instruments is recognized by both composers and performers in Korea — particularly by the younger generation � as being uniquely innovative. Her writing for combinations of Western and Eastern instruments is unusual in its refusal to compromise the integrity of differing sounds and ideas; she prefers to let them interact, coexist, and conflict in her music.

In Korea, she has twice been awarded the Korean National Composers Prize, and in the West, she has been commissioned by the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, among many others. Her music has been played worldwide by ensembles as varied as the Barton Workshop, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Kronos Quartet, and the Korean Traditional Orchestra of the National Theatre. Portrait concerts consisting solely of her music have been presented in Amsterdam by the Barton Workshop (2006), in Seoul by JeonGaAkHoe (2009) and Buam Arts (2009), and at Texas A&M University (2007); an additional portrait concert is planned for 2010 in Santa Cruz by New Music Works.

She is the author of the bilingual book Conversations with Kayageum Master Byung-ki Hwang (Pulbit Press, 2001) and the translator into Korean of Christian Wolff's article Experiments in Music around 1950 and Some Consequences and Causes Social-political and Musical (Soomoon-dang Press, 2009). Her music has been recorded on the Fontec (Japan), Top Arts (Korea), Seoul (Korea), and New World Records (U.S.) labels and has been published in Korea and Australia. Since 2006, her music has been published exclusively by Lantro Music (Belgium).

Mohsen Namjoo was born in 1976 in a traditional Iranian family in Torbate-jam - a small city famous for its Dotar players - but he grew up in the city of Mashhad. His passion for music began in early childhood. At the age of twelve, after the death of his father (which affected him enormously), his elder sister and mother decided to send him to singing classes organized by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Mashhad. He began to study Iranian traditional singing and music reading and writing with Nassrolahe Nasseh-Pour.

At the same time, he was also selected to study in a special school for gifted and talented children, but he took music more seriously, contrary to the wishes of his family. Later on, music took over his life. He persisted with singing for over six years and completed learning the repertoire of Iranian traditional singing with Mr. Nasseh-Pour and became his best student during this period. At the age of eighteen, he decided to take the university entrance examination in the fields of art and music. For this entrance examination, he also needed to know how to play a musical instrument. He chose the setar, an old Iranian instrument.

In 1994, he was offered a place to study theatre at the University of Dramatic Arts in Tehran and a place for music at Tehran University. Mohsen took the place to study theatre first, as he was told the music course at Tehran University would begin a year later. Becoming familiar with drama and theatre affected him greatly, and later he incorporated what he had learned in that short period towards his musical performances.

In 1995, he eventually joined the undergraduate music course at Tehran University, where he was a student of Mr. Alireza Mashayekhi, Dr. Azin Movahed, and Dr. Khosro Molana. Mohsen also taught himself how to play the guitar and has learned much from listening to Western singers and musicians such as Jim Morrison and Mark Knopfler. In Khorassan, he took lessons from masters of Iranian folk music Haj Ghorbane Soleimani and Alme Joghi.

Mohsen started recording some of his compositions in 2003, in solo settings and with two different bands. He also writes poetry with a unique flair. In his songs, he sometimes uses his own satirical lyrics and blends them with the Classical poetry of Hafez, Rumi, and Saadi. His music and words are very emotional; in his works, he creates an exceptional fusion between various styles from traditional Iranian to blues and rock.

Mohsen has composed about 100 pieces of music, forty-five of which have been recorded. These works have been put together in five different albums. Some of these solo works have been recorded as raw material with the idea of being recorded with a band or orchestra in the future.

Thomas Schultz has established an international reputation both as an interpreter of music from the classical tradition - particularly Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt - and as one of the leading exponents of the music of our time. Among his recent engagements are solo recitals in New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Ghent, Seoul, Taipei, and Kyoto, and at the Schoenberg Festival in Vienna, the Piano Spheres series in Los Angeles, Korea's Tongyoung Festival, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, and the April in Santa Cruz Festival. He has also appeared as a soloist at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, and in chamber music performances with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Da Camera Society of Houston, Robert Craft's 20TH Century Classics Ensemble, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. 2005, he gave a series of masterclasses on the piano music of the Second Viennese School at the Schoenberg Center in Vienna.

His recitals are notable for programming that celebrates the continuing vitality of the piano repertoire, juxtaposing the old and the new, or focusing solely on new works. He has worked closely with such eminent composers as Cage, Feldman, Wolff, Rzewski, Earle Brown, Jonathan Harvey, and Elliott Carter (in performances of the Double Concerto at the Colorado Music Festival and at Alice Tully Hall in New York).

Since 2002, Schultz has included in his recitals works written especially for him by Frederic Rzewski (The Babble, 2003), Christian Wolff (Touch, 2002; Long Piano, 2005), Hyo-shin Na (Rain Study, 1999; Walking, Walking, 2003), Walter Zimmermann (AIMIDE, 2001-2002), Boudewijn Buckinx (The Floating World, 2004; Romancing The World, 2005), and Yuji Takahashi (For Thomas Schultz, 2001).

His recording of Stravinsky's Concerto for Two Solo Pianos is on the MusicMasters label; he can be heard in chamber works of Earle Brown on a Newport Classics recording, and his recordings of works by the Korean composer Hyo-shin Na on CDs from the Seoul and TopArt labels have received special recognition. His solo CDs - a double CD of the Goldberg Variations of Bach and Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated, and a CD of works written for him by Takahashi, Buckinx, and Wolff - are on the Wooden Fish label.

Schultz's musical studies were with John Perry, Leonard Stein, and Philip Lillestol. He has been a member of the piano faculty at Stanford University since 1994.

Recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001-04), Chen Yi has served as the Lorena Searcey Cravens / Millsap / Missouri Distinguished Professor in Music Composition at the Conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998. Prior to her current appointment, Chen served on the composition faculty of Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (1996-1998) and as Composer-in-Residence with the Women's Philharmonic, Chanticleer, and Aptos Creative Arts Center in San Francisco (1993-1996), supported by Meet The Composer's New Residencies Program. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.

Born 4 April, 1953, in Guangzhou, China, into a family of doctors with a strong interest in classical music, Chen Yi started studying violin and piano at age three with Zheng Rihua and Li Suxin and music theory with Zheng Zhong. Dr. Chen has received music degrees from the Beijing Central Conservatory (BA and MA) and Columbia University in the City of New York (DMA). Dr. Chen's major composition teachers included Professors Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, Wu Zu-qiang, and Alexander Goehr.

Chen Yi was the first woman to receive a Master's degree in composition in China in June 1986, when she presented a full evening concert of her orchestral works in Beijing. She was also the first woman to present a full evening multimedia orchestral concert in the U.S. (the Chinese Myths Cantata for orchestra, choir, Chinese traditional instrumental soloists, dancers, and image projection) in May 1996, with three sold-out performances in San Francisco. In 2001, she was invited by the China National Symphony Orchestra and Chorus to give a concert of her orchestral and choral works in Beijing. On 29 May, 2008, there was another concert of more recent orchestral works presented by the China National Symphony Orchestra in Beijing. By combining Chinese and Western traditions, Chen Yi transcends cultural and musical boundaries, and serves as an ambassador for the arts, creating music that reaches a wide range of audiences and inspires people of different cultural backgrounds.

Dr. Chen has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1996) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1994), as well as the Lieberson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996). Other honors include first prize in the Chinese National Composition Competition (1985), the Lili Boulanger Award from the National Women Composers Resource Center (1993), New York University's Sorel Medal (1996), the CalArts / Alpert Award (1997), a Grammy Award (1999), the University of Texas Eddie Medora King Composition Prize (1999), the Adventurous Programming and Concert Music awards from ASCAP (1999 and 2001), the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Elise Stoeger Award (2002), the Edgar Snow Memorial Fund's Friendship Ambassador Award (2002), an honorary doctorate from Lawrence University (2002), and the Kauffman Award in Artistry / Scholarship from the UMKC Conservatory (2006).

Dr. Chen has received major commissions from the Koussevitzky, Fromm, Ford, Rockefeller, and Roche foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, Meet The Composer, the Creative Work Fund, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Mary Cary Trust, NYSCA, Carnegie Hall, New Heritage Music Foundation, Friends of Dresden Music Foundation, the American Guild of Organists, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Eastman School, Ithaca College, Bradley University, Miami University, Chorus America, and the 6TH World Symposium on Choral Music. Commissioning ensembles and soloists include the Lucerne Music Festival for the Cleveland Orchestra, Mira Wang along with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the BBC Proms Festival for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, Yo-Yo Ma and the Pacific Symphony, Rasch�r Saxophone Quartet and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Yehudi Menuhin, Emanuel Ax, Michala Petri, Evelyn Glennie and the Singapore Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Women's Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Wind Symphony, Philadelphia Classical Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, New Music Consort, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Chanticleer, KITKA, San Francisco Citywinds, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Music From China, the Ying Quartet, the Elements Quartet, the Shanghai Quartet, the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestra, the HK Chinese Orchestra, Boston Musica Viva, Network For New Music, Opus 21,Chicago a cappella, KC Chorale, Peninsula Women's Chorus, and many others. Dr. Chen's music is performed worldwide and published by Theodore Presser Company. Her works have been recorded on the New Albion (1997), CRI/NewWorld (1999, 2007), Teldec (1997, 1999 with Grammy, 2003), Nimbus (1993, 2000), Cala (1995), Avant (1998), Atma (1999), Hugo (2000), Angel (2001), Bis (2002-2004), Albany (2004-2006), Cavalli (2004), Centaur (2004-2005), Quartz (2006), and China Record Corporation (1986, 1990) labels. Dr. Chen's most recent CD releases include recordings of a cello concerto, Eleanor's Gift, the Golden Flute concerto, a string quartet, At the Kansas City Chinese New Year Concert, and a third album of orchestral works titled Momentum.

Born in 1929 in Koriyama, Japan, Joji Yuasa is a self-taught composer. He first became interested in music in his boyhood. Yuasa made the acquaintance of Toru Takemitsu (composer), Kuniharu Akiyama (musicologist), and others while a pre-medical student at Keio University in Tokyo. He joined them in forming the Jikken-kobo (Experimental Workshop) in 1952, and turned to devote himself to music. Since then, Yuasa has been actively engaged in a wide range of musical composition, including orchestral, choral and chamber music, music for theatre and intermedia, and electronic and computer music. Yuasa has won numerous commissions for his works from such institutions as the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Saarland Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Canada Council, Suntory Music Foundation, IRCAM, and National Endowment for the Arts of the U.S.A., among others.

Yuasa has received a number of scholarships at home and abroad: Japan Society Fellowship (1968-1969), Composer in Residence at the Center for Music Experiment UCSD (1976), Berlin Artist Program by DAAD (1976-1977), the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in Sydney (1980), the University of Toronto (1981) and IRCAM (1987), among others.

As a guest composer and lecturer, Yuasa has contributed to the Festival of the Arts of This Century in Hawaii (1970), New Music Concerts in Toronto (1980), Asian Composers League in Hong Kong (1981), concert tour for Contemporary Music Network by British Arts Council (1981), Asia Pacific Festival in New Zealand (1984), Composers Workshop in Amsterdam (1984), Darmstadt Summer Course for Contemporary Music (1988), Lerchenborg Music Tage (1986, 1988), Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo (1990), and Music of Japan Today: Tradition and Innovation at Hamilton College, NY (1992).

From 1981 through 1994, Yuasa was actively engaged in music research and education at the University of California, San Diego (currently a professor emeritus). He has also been a guest professor at Tokyo College of Music since 1981 and a professor for the postgraduate course of the College of Arts at Nihon University since 1993. — E.M. Richards