Tan Dun

That same year, Tan Dun premiered his next opera, The Peony Pavilion, an adaptation of Tang Xianzu's 1598 Kunqu play of the same name.

Directed by Peter Sellars in its original production, Tan Dun's work is performed entirely in English, though one of the characters must be trained in Peking or Kunqu style.

The small ensemble of six musicians performs electronics and Chinese instruments onstage with the actors.

Stylistically, the music is a blend of Western avant-garde and Chinese opera.

At this point in his career, Tan Dun had created many works for "organic instruments," i.e. instruments constructed from materials such as paper, water, ceramic, and stone.

Tan Dun (, ; born 18 August 1957) is a Chinese-born American composer and conductor.

A leading figure of contemporary classical music, he draws from a variety of Western and Chinese influences, a dichotomy which has shaped much of his life and music.

Tan Dun was born in 1957 in a village in Changsha in Hunan, China.

As a child, he was fascinated by the rituals and ceremonies of the village shaman, which were typically set to music made with natural objects such as rocks and water.

Due to the bans enacted during the Cultural Revolution, he was discouraged from pursuing music and was sent to work as a rice planter on the Huangjin commune.

He joined an ensemble of other commune residents and learned to play traditional Chinese string instruments.

Following a ferry accident that resulted in the death of several members of a Peking opera troupe, Tan Dun was called upon as a violist and arranger.

This initial success earned him a seat in the orchestra, and from there he went to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1977.

While at the Conservatory, Tan Dun came into contact with composers such as Toru Takemitsu, George Crumb, Alexander Goehr, Hans Werner Henze, Isang Yun, and Chou Wen-chung, all of whom influenced his sense of musical style.

In 1986, he moved to New York City as a doctoral student at Columbia University, once again studying with Chou Wen-chung, who had studied under Edgard Varèse.

At Columbia, Tan Dun discovered the music of composers such as Philip Glass, John Cage, Meredith Monk, and Steve Reich, and began incorporating these influences into his compositions.

During his time at Columbia University, Tan Dun composed his first opera, a setting of nature poems by Qu Yuan called Nine Songs (1989).

The poems are sung in both Classical Chinese and contemporary English alongside a small ensemble of Western and Chinese instruments.

Among these are a specially built set of 50 ceramic percussion, string, and wind instruments, designed in collaboration with potter Ragnar Naess.

To emphasize the shamanistic nature of Qu Yuan's poetry, the actors dance and move in a ritualized manner.

Since receiving a DMA from Columbia University in 1993, Tan has been based in New York City.

His compositions often incorporate audiovisual elements; use instruments constructed from organic materials, such as paper, water, and stone; and are often inspired by traditional Chinese theatrical and ritual performance.

He completed his dissertation, Death and Fire: Dialogue with Paul Klee, in 1993.

Inspired by a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, Death and Fire is a short symphony that engages with the paintings of Paul Klee.

Having collaborated with leading orchestras around the world, Tan is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Grawemeyer Award for his opera Marco Polo (1996) and both an Academy Award and Grammy Award for his film score in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

His oeuvre as a whole includes operas, orchestral, vocal, chamber, solo and film scores, as well as genres that Tan terms "organic music" and "music ritual."

Born in Hunan, China, Tan grew up during the Cultural Revolution and received musical education from the Central Conservatory of Music.

His early influences included both Chinese music and 20th-century classical music.

Tan Dun's second work in the genre, Marco Polo (1996), set to a libretto by Paul Griffiths, is an opera within an opera.

It begins with the spiritual journey of two characters, Marco and Polo, and their encounters with various historic figures of literature and music, including Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Scheherazade, Sigmund Freud, John Cage, Gustav Mahler, Li Po, and Kublai Khan.

These sections are presented in an abstract, Peking opera style.

Interwoven with these sections are the travels of the real-life Marco Polo, presented in a Western operatic style.

Though the score calls for traditional Western orchestral instrumentation, additional instruments are used to indicate the location of the characters, including recorder, rebec, sitar, tabla, singing bowls, Tibetan horn, sheng, and pipa.

The opera won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1998.

For his fourth opera, Tea: A Mirror of Soul (2002), co-authored by librettist Xu Ying, organic instruments factor prominently into the structure of the opera itself.

The title of each act corresponds to the materials of the instruments being used, as well as the opera's plot.

The first act, entitled "Water, Fire", opens with a tea ceremony onstage while percussionists manipulate glass bowls of water.

In 2013, he was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.

On 15 June 2016, he created the Grand Opening Theme Song of Shanghai Disney Resort.

On 1 August 2019 he was appointed as dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.