Chinese Pipa Virtuoso Gao Hong to Join Unique Zeitgeist Concerts

Gao Hong, a master of the pear-shaped Chinese lute and member of the Carleton College music faculty, will join local new-music ensemble Zeitgeist in Converging Traditions, a rare concert experience joining the best of Eastern and Western music. Composer and banjo champion Paul Elwood will also play in the concerts that find common ground between traditional Chinese music and the bluegrass sounds of Appalachia. The eclectic performances will take place May 29 through June 6 at Studio Z in St. Paul. For more information, visit www.zeitgeistnewmusic.org.

The performances include:

* Converging Traditions: May 29, 30, June 4, 5, 6, 8 p.m.: Come together for unique sounds of bluegrass, the music of China and more as Zeitgeist brings together the best of music from across the world (tickets: $10).

* Lowertown Listening Session: May 31, 2 p.m.: In this intimate afternoon session, Elwood will jam on banjo with Zeitgeist (tickets: $5).

Gao Hong began her career as a professional musician at age 12. She graduated with honors from China’s premier music school, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she studied with pipa master Lin Shicheng. She performs throughout Europe, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, China and the United States in solo concerts and with symphony orchestras, jazz musicians and musicians from other cultures. She has performed at many major festivals worldwide, including the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Jazz Festival, Smithsonian Institution, Next Wave Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris in Paris and Caen, France, International Festival of Perth, Australia and Festival de Teatro d’Europa in Milan, Italy. Her performances of pipa concerti with symphony orchestras include world, U.S. and regional premieres and performances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony, Heidelberg (Germany) Philharmonic, the Women’s Philharmonic in San Francisco, the Portland (Maine) Symphony and the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra among others.

In both China and the United States, Gao Hong has received numerous awards and honors, including first prize in the Hebei Professional Young Music Performers Competition and an International Art Cup in Beijing. In 2005, she became the first traditional musician to be awarded a Bush Artist Fellowship and is the only musician to have won three McKnight Artist Fellowships for Performing Musicians. The Minnesota State Arts Board awarded her an Artist Assistance fellowship, an Artist Initiative grant and a Cultural Community Partnership grant. She has also received a Leadership Initiatives in Neighborhoods grant from the St. Paul Companies, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study grants, an Asian Pacific Award, Encore awards, Subito awards and Performance Incentive Fund awards from the American Composers Forum.

As a composer, she has received commissions from the American Composers Forum, Walker Art Center, Jerome Foundation, Zeitgeist, Ragamala Music and Dance Theater, Theater Mu, IFTPA and Twin Cities Public Television for the six-part series Made in China. In 2008, to celebrate her 35th anniversary of playing her instrument and 10 years as a composer, Hong presented two major concerts featuring her compositions at Ted Mann Concert Hall in Minneapolis and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.

Since her arrival in the United States in 1994, Gao Hong has presented hundreds of educational workshops for elementary through college students and served on the faculty of Metropolitan State University and MacPhail Center for the Arts. At Carleton College she teaches Chinese instruments and is a roster artist with the Minnesota State Arts Board and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s CONNECT Program. In 2008 she was awarded an honorary guest professor position at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. China’s foremost music publication, People’s Music, wrote “like the famous Luoyang peony, she has gradually emerged as the best of all beautiful flowers…her performance has extremely strong artistic appeal and belongs under the category of ‘fine wine’…the more you listen, the more beautiful it gets…”

A banjo champion, Paul Elwood regularly performs in the realms of bluegrass, free improvisation and new music. His fellowships include the American Academy in Rome as Southern Regional Visiting Composer, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi, the Camargo Foundation in France, and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain. In 2000 he was awarded the Sigma Alpha Iota Philanthropies Inter-American Music Award for Vigils for solo piano, and in 2002 placed in Accademia Musicale Pescarese Pierre Schaeffer Computer Music Competition in Italy. He was featured as a composer and performer on banjo at the Cold Alternativa Festival of New American Music in Moscow, the Nuit d’hiver in Marseille, France, the Voltage Festival in Australia, the World Saxophone Congresses in Montreal and Minneapolis, the Ferienkursen in Germany and all across the United States.

The 1986 Kansas State Bluegrass Banjo Champion, Elwood has worked with diverse players including bluegrass legend John Hartford, Native American musician Robert Mirabal, jazz cellist Hank Roberts, French jazz sax virtuoso Raphaël Imbert, bassist Robert Black, electric guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, Andrew Bishop’s Hank Williams Project and European improvisational ensemble Electric Cowboy Cacophony. Elwood was also a featured solo performer on a live broadcast on MTV Europe. His music is published by C.F. Peters, Smith Publications and Western Wear Music Publishing. He is assistant professor of composition at the University of Northern Colorado.

“Through new music, Converging Traditions will give audiences the opportunity to discover common ground between two musical traditions developed worlds apart,” said Heather Barringer, managing director and percussionist for Zeitgeist. “We are thrilled that both Paul and Gao Hong will join us, so the audience can really connect and come together with our composers.”

Converging Traditions is made possible, in part, through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and donations to the Zeitgeist Commissioning Collective. Seasons was developed through The Zeitgeist Composer Workshop, funded by the Jerome Foundation, and a forty-four smokeless was commissioned with support from the American Composers Forum Jerome Foundation Commissioning Program.

For more information, contact Studio Z at (651) 755-1500, located at 275 East Fourth Street in downtown St. Paul, Minn.