Zhou Long (b. July 8, 1953, Beijing). Chinese-born American composer of mostly orchestral, chamber and vocal works that have been performed throughout the world.
Mr. Zhou studied piano as a child, but the Cultural Revolution interrupted his musical progress in 1966. He later studied composition with Wu Zu-qiang at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing from 1977-83. He then studied composition with Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University and there earned his DMA in 1993.
His honors include First prizes in the Ensemblia in Mönchengladbach (1990, for Ding [Samadhi]), d'Avray (France, 1991, for Dhyana), Barlow (1994, for Tian Ling), and Masterprize (1998, for Two Poems from Tang) competitions, as well as many earlier prizes in national competitions in China. Most recently, he received the Adventurous Programming Award from ASCAP (1999, for Music from China), a Grammy Award (1999, for the Teldec CD of his Words of the Sun and works by other composers) and the Academy Award in Music for lifetime achievement from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2003). He has also received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts and various grants. Numerous ensembles, orchestras and organizations in China, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the UK, and the USA have commissioned him.
Mr. Zhou is also active in other positions. He served as composer-in-residence to the National Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra of China from 1983-85 and as the Music Alive! composer-in-residence to the Silk Road Project Festival of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 2002. In addition, he currently serves as artistic director of the ensemble Music from China in New York City.
He is the Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. He has also taught as a Visiting Professor at Brooklyn College and Memphis University and has given composition lectures and masterclasses at universities in China and throughout the USA.
He has lived in the USA since 1985 and is married to the composer Chen Yi.
Oxford University Press publishes his music.