Acclaimed Chinese Composer Examines Role of Culture in Music in Lawrence University Lecture

APPLETON, WIS. -- Award-winning composer Chen Yi, who survived relocation to a forced labor camp as a teenager to become the first woman in China to earn a master's degree in composition, discusses the role culture plays in her music and the differences in writing for western and Chinese instruments in the Lawrence University lecture "Tradition and Creation."

Chen's address, Wednesday, May 23 at 4:15 p.m. in Main Hall, Room 202, is part of Lawrence's week-long Women's Music Festival. The event is free and open to the public.

Trained in both Western classical music and traditional Chinese music, Chen began studying the violin and piano at the age of three. Caught up in China's Cultural Revolution, she was sent to work in a rural labor camp at age 15, but eventually returned to Beijing to continue her musical studies. In 1986, she earned a master's degree in composition from the Beijing Central Conservatory, an event that was celebrated with a nationally televised concert of her work.

Widely hailed as one of the world's leading contemporary composers, Chen received the prestigious $225,000 Charles Ives Living Award in 2000 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, enabling her to concentrate full-time on her composing.

Currently a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory, Chen has received commissions to write compositions for the Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Hall and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among others. Her works have been premiered by world-renowned musicians and ensembles, including the National Symphony Orchestra, percussionist Evelyn Glennie and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.