Jindong Cai is director of the US-China Music Institute, professor of music and arts at Bard College, and associate conductor of The Orchestra Now. Previously, Cai was a professor of performance at Stanford University. During a career spanning more than three decades in the United States, Cai has established himself as an active and dynamic conductor, scholar of Western classical music in China, and advocate of music from across Asia. At Bard, Cai founded the annual China Now Music Festival. China Now presents new works by some of the most important Chinese composers of our time, with major concerts performed by The Orchestra Now at Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Stanford University. In 2019, the festival premiered Men of Iron and the Golden Spike by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Zhou Long, a symphonic oratorio in commemoration of the Chinese railroad workers of North America on the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. With his wife, Sheila Melvin, Cai has coauthored many articles on the performing arts in China and the book Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese. Their latest book is Beethoven in China: How the Great Composer Became an Icon in the People’s Republic.

Huang Zongquan is a professor at the Central Conservatory of Music, the Deputy Chief Editor of the "Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music," and a council member of the Chinese Society for Aesthetics of Music, the Chinese Society for Music Criticism, and the Chinese Society for Western Music. He is also a member of the CAAI Committee on Art and Artificial Intelligence, an executive member of the CCF Committee on Computational Art, a contracted critic for the Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and a member of the Stage Arts Committee of the Beijing Association of Critics. His main research areas are music aesthetics and music sociology. He has published the monograph "The Attributes of Aesthetics of Music" and serves as the sub-project leader for the major national social science fund project "Research on 'Chineseness' in Music Composition." He participates in the research of the major art project under the National Social Science Fund titled "Aesthetic Issues in Music Artificial Intelligence."

Frank Kouwenhoven (b.1956 in The Hague, The Netherlands) is a writer, editor and music scholar based in Leiden, The Netherlands. After university studies in Utrecht and an early career as a journalist, he became a co-founder of CHIME, a worldwide platform on Chinese music research, in 1990. With his partner Antoinet Schimmelpenninck (d. 2012) he has undertaken extensive fieldwork in China since 1986, studying folk songs, guqin, Chinese shadow puppetry, new Chinese music and other genres. He has published widely, and has also produced films and CDs. He has been active as an organizer of major festivals, exhibitions, and concert tours of Chinese music across Europe. He is chief editor of the CHIME journal.

Li Zhong studied International Communication and Language Broadcasting and obtained a Master of Law degree before beginning his career in 1995. Prior to his appointment to Vice Chairman of the University Council at the Central Conservatory of Music, Li served as Vice Chairman of the University Council of the Communiciation University of China. He is also supervisor of the 11th Council of the Building Research Association for Universities in Beijing; and Vice President of the Building Research Association for Radio and Television of China Federation of Radio and Television Social Organizations. He has been dedicated to systematic research in the fields of cross-cultural communication and language dissemination, focusing on cultural interaction mechanisms within a globalized context. Li explores collaborative training models for international talents in response to the needs for enhanced international communication efficacy, continually promoting the integration of academic development with practical demands.

Jui-Ching Wang, D.M.A., is professor at Northern Illinois University where she teaches music education and world music courses and coordinates the world music program. Wang received her bachelor's degree in music from Soochow University in Taipei, master's degrees in piano performance and music education from Northern Illinois University, and her doctorate in music education from Arizona State University. She has published articles on the topics of music and culture, music education, and world music numerous major journals and other publications. As an advocate of the study of music as culture, she has provided training and demonstrations for in-service teachers and music students in the U.S., Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China, and Taiwan to help them expand their cultural horizons through music. As a Fulbright Scholar, Wang studied traditional Javanese children's singing games, tembang dolanan anak, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 2016-17.

Sheila Melvin is a writer and consultant who focuses on both culture and business. Together with her husband, the conductor Jindong Cai, she is the author of Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese, Beethoven in China: How the Great Composer Became an Icon in the People’s Republic, and The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra: Music Connecting Worlds. Melvin’s writing on the arts in Asia, primarily China, has been published widely in US and international publications. Ms. Melvin is also a writer for the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Earlier in her career, she spent many years working for the US-China Business Council.

François Picard is Professor emeritus of analytical ethnomusicology at Sorbonne Université and a research member of IReMus. A founder and permanent member of the board of CHIME Foundation, he has been President of the Société française d’ethnomusicologie from 2018 to 2021. He learned and practiced many different musical genres, until he studied Chinese music in Paris with Tran Van Khê. He then went to Shanghai to study and do research, which led him to the study of music in ritual contexts. A long journey led him to the historically informed interpretation of Chinese music. He has published three books: La Musique chinoise, 1991, You-feng 2003; Lexique des musiques d’Asie orientale, You-feng 2006; L’Incantation du patriarche Pu’an, Peeters 2012, more than thirty CDs, and contributed to Alan Thrasher, ed., Qupai, The Heart of Chinese Music, Structure, Routledge, 2016. He has been artistic director for productions from China, Taiwan, and Tibet. He specializes in the research and performance of ancient Chinese music, and in organology. He served as board member and president for the Wachsmann Prize of the best essay in organology for the Society for ethnomusicology SEM. He plays xiao flute and sheng mouth organ, among other wind instruments.

Jing Xia is a guzheng performer, intercultural arts promotor, Chinese music scholar and educator. Xia started her guzheng studies when she was four years old. Since then, she has delved into the world of guzheng music and studies with many famous Chinese guzheng masters. She holds a Master of Musicology and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the China Conservatory of Music. She obtained her Ph.D. in Applied Intercultural Arts Research with an emphasis in applied ethnomusicology and health promotion science at the University of Arizona. As a performing artist, Xia has been invited to perform concerts with the “Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra” along with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Beijing Symphony Orchestra, China National Traditional Orchestra, Huaxia Chinese Orchestra, Chandler Symphony Orchestra, and Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra. Aside from her devotion to the culture of traditional music, she is also enthusiastic about exploring new music, techniques, idioms, sounds, genres, cultures, and other aspects of musical perception. Her intercultural music project, the Duo Chinoiserie, seeks to build new musical bridges between the East and West. Xia serves on the faculty of the US-China Music Institute at the Bard Conservatory as a teacher of guzheng.

Yao Chen’s music, ritualistic in nature, eschews contemporary vogues, aiming instead at a timelessness and an otherness— music for the moment, but also music for then and for what lies ahead. Yao’s perceptions on musical time, timbre, intonation, pulsation, and expression are always at frontiers: between the old and new, East and West, mysticism and logic. These perceptions have imbued such works as From the Vessel of Ancient Souls, Garden: Unearthing the Way Home, Pipa Plays Opera, The Supplicant, Emanations of Tara, and Yearning. Yao received his PhD in music composition from the University of Chicago. He is currently a professor of composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. He has held lectureships at the University of Chicago Music Department and professorships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Music, and Soochow University School of Music, among others.

Ye Xiaogang is the founding dean of the School of Music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, a professor of Composition at the Central Conservatory of Music, and a music educator. Widely considered one of the most important composers of his generation, he studied at Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music in China from 1978n until 1983. From 1987, he studied at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester in New York. His former teachers include Minxin Du, Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Louis Andriessen and Alexander Goehr. Ye has composed a large number of works in a variety of genres, including symphonic music, chamber music, dance drama and opera, as well as film and TV music. His important symphonic works include Ode to Heroes, Horizon, The Last Paradise, Song of the Earth, Twilight of the Himalayas, Scent of Green Mango, Mount E’mei, Lu Xun (Symphony No.5), The Heroes (Symphony No.7), The Backyard of the Village, Springs in the Forest, Yangzhuoyong Cuo, Shenzhen Story, Macau Bride Suites and Yong Le. Ye’s piano concerto Starry Sky, written for Lang Lang, was viewed by an audience of around three billion people worldwide when it was performed as part of the opening ceremony concert of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Ye has been enthusiastic in the promotion of music and of national arts education. He has made strong appeals to increase government funding for the arts and has proposed motions concerning cross-cultural exchanges and the protection of musical copyright.

A master qin performer, Mingmei Yip has given lectures and performances at venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, New York Philharmonic, Columbia University, Oxford University, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Amsterdam University, China Institute in New York, and Oberlin Conservatory. She served as consultant for Beijing’s Chinese Qin Association, director of the Chinese Kun Opera and Guqin Research Association, artistic consul- tant for the New York Cultural Art Association, and on the academic board of the Chengdu International Qin Conference, among other positions. Yip has published over seventy articles and sixteen books, including seven novels, four children’s books, a book on Zen Buddhism, a collection of her essays, The World of Music, and two on the qin: Art of Guqin Music,and Guqin Art and Chinese Culture. She is also an accomplished painter and calligrapher. Yip received her PhD in musicology from the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and was lecturer and senior lecturer of music at Chinese University of Hong Kong and Baptist University, respectively. She researched the qin as an International Institute for Asian Studies fellow in Holland. As visiting professor at the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, she teaches Chinese music history and serves as academic advisor for the Master of Arts in Chinese Music and Culture.

Shutong Li, Music Director and Conductor

The Bard Chinese Ensemble is one of the key components of the Chinese instrument major at the Bard Conservatory, offering numerous public performance opportunities for students of Chinese instruments. Students of Western instruments are also encouraged to participate, as well as non-majors with interest in Chinese music. The Ensemble performs at least two major concerts on campus every semester to showcase the varied styles of both modern and traditional Chinese instrumental music.

Jindong Cai, Music Director and Conductor

The Bard East-West Ensemble (BE/WE) is a dynamic and original music group that brings together the essence of Chinese and Western soundscapes to create a new model of cross-cultural performance. The ensemble aims to combine Eastern and Western musical traditions, and is committed to performing arrangements and original works with unique instrumentation, thereby creating a new realm of musical expression. The core members of the ensemble are composed of a Western string quintet and seven Chinese instruments including dizi, erhu, pipa, ruan, suona, guzheng and sheng, with Chinese and Western percussionists. The Bard East/West Ensemble has performed in many major venues on the East Coast of the United States. Between 2022 and 2024, BE/WE appeared at the renowned Kennedy Center and at the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., and on the stages of Jazz at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York City. The group has collaborated with world-class solo artists including winds virtuoso Yazhi Guo, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, and the guzheng/guitar combo Duo Chinoiserie. BE/WE’s innovative repertoire includes commissions of new compositions and arrangements by celebrated composers including Zhou Long, Tan Dun, Xinyan Li, Hao Weiya, Mathias Duplessy, and many others.

Founded in 2016, Duo Chinoiserie has emerged as an unparalleled musical phenomenon, captivating audiences with their transcendent performances. Spearheaded by the exceptional talents of Chinese guzheng virtuoso Jing Xia and classical guitarist Bin Hu, this duo comprises two highly accomplished musicians who have attained unrivaled acclaim in their professional fields.