Zhou Long

Due to the artistic restrictions implemented during the Cultural Revolution, he was forced to delay his piano studies and live on a state-run farm where he operated a tractor.

One year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Zhou Long was one of one hundred students chosen from eighteen thousand applicants to study at the newly reopened Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1977.

With only a brief stay in this position, Zhou Long journeyed to the United States under a fellowship to attend Columbia University and further his composition studies with Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, and George Edwards, receiving a Doctor of Musical Arts in 1993.

[1] In July 2017, the National Youth Orchestra of China, conducted by Ludovic Morlot of the Seattle Symphony, performed Zhou Long's piece "The Rhyme of Taigu" to a sold-out Carnegie Hall.

[6] Accompanied by other Chinese composers such as Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, and Chen Yi, Zhou Long and his contemporaries all primarily entered conservatories in Beijing and Shanghai immediately following the Cultural Revolution.

Finally, craft ensures your own full expression.”[2] As described in his own words, Zhou Long works to capture Chinese timbres and folk themes and incorporate them with Western conceptions of harmony, chromaticism and angularity.