Lei Liang

Title: YUAN
Commission: 2007
Completed: 2008
Instrumentation: saxophone quartet
Premiere Location: Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory
Premiere Ensemble: The Radnofsky Quartet
Notes:

Chinese-born American composer Lei Liang is the winner of the Rome Prize, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, a Creative Capital Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His concerto for saxophone and orchestra, Xiaoxiang, was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2015. His orchestral work, A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, won the prestigious 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.

Lei Liang was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for the inaugural concert of the CONTACT! new music series. Other commissions come from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, pipa virtuoso Wu Man, among others. Lei Liang’s fourteen portrait discs are released on Naxos, New World, Mode, BMOP/sound, and Bridge Records. As a scholar, he has edited and co-edited eight books and editions, and published more than fifty articles.

From 2013-2016, Lei Liang served as Composer-in-Residence at the Qualcomm Institute/Calit2 where his multimedia works preserve and reimagine cultural heritage through combining scientific research and advanced technology. In 2023, the Institute launched “Lei Lab” where he continues to collaborate with engineers, geologists, oceanographers and software developers, to explore what he calls “the unique potential for learning offered by creative listening.”

Lei Liang’s recent works address issues of sex trafficking across the US-Mexican border, America's complex relationship with gun and violence, and environmental awareness through the sonification of coral reefs.

Lei Liang received degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music (B.M. and M.M.) and Harvard University (Ph.D.). He is Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. His catalogue of more than a hundred works is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation (New York).