Gao Ping
Gao PingGao Ping's music (www.gaoping.org) has been performed in Europe, Asia, Russia, and across the Americas. In demand as a composer and pianist, he has received commissions from the Zurich-based Ensemble Pyramide, pianists Frederic Rzewski and Ursula Oppens, violinst Arnold Steindhart, the Starling Chamber Orchestra, Dutch flutist Eleonore Pameijer, the Taiwan National Chinese Orchestra, Cincinnati Chinese Music Society, and the Shenzhen Dance Company. A disc of Gao Ping's music is to be released on the Naxos label. He was a composer-in-residence at the MacDowell Artist Colony.
His work for narrator and chamber orchestra, The Emperor and Nightingale, was premiered at the Aspen Music Festival in 2002 and is now featured as an audio/visual display in the National Underground Railway Freedom Center in the US. The Concertino for Violin and Strings was premiered in Beijing and has subsequently met with critical acclaim throughout China and the United States. Other compositions have appeared at venues such as the Gaudeamus International Music Week in Amsterdam, the 2005 World Music Festival and Conference in Bangkok and the Beijing Modern- International Music Festival. Gao Ping's music has been heard on National Public Radio's "Performance Today", WNYC, as well as having been featured on Chinese broadcasts reaching millions of listeners.
As a pianist, Gao Ping's sensibilities evoke a respect for the traditional canon as well as a thirst for the avant garde. Among the living composers with whom he has collaborated are George Crumb, Frederic Rzewski, Jack Body, and scores of composers from his native China. His concerts often feature improvisations as well.
A New Zealand critic described Gao Ping's performances as "spellbinding" and "magical." Jack Body has said that Gao Ping is a "total musician, a pianist of great intelligence and sensitivity, an astounding improviser, and a composer whose effortless fluency I envy deeply." The People's Music has called Gao's recitals "sensational" and the Cincinnati Enquirer praised Gao's technique as "fleet and facile".
Dr. Gao has recorded for the Naxos label, Waiteata Press of New Zealand, and the Starling Label and maintains an active schedule as a presenter of seminars, master-classes, and guest recitals. In recent years, he has been heard at the Shanghai Conservatory, the Central Conservatory in Beijing, the School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington, and his alma mater of Oberlin Conservatory. He is a composition lecturer at the School of Music at Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand. Gao Ping has worked with musicians such as Joel Hoffman, Frederic Rzewski, James Tocco, and Gao Weijie.