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Artist
Du Yun
12+ albums
composercontemporary classicalchineseinstrumentalpiano
about
The music of Du Yun, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2017, is difficult to classify, including aspects of, to quote her own website, "orchestral , opera, chamber music, theatre, cabaret, pop music, oral tradition, visual arts, electronics and noise." She also does not readily conform to description as Chinese or American. Du was born in Shanghai on June 18, 1977. Her musical education coincided with the rebuilding of Western-influenced institutions in China after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and she was trained from girlhood in composition and piano at the Shanghai Conservatory. A second major set of influences came when China opened itself to Western popular culture in the '90s. With a group of Kenyan exchange students, Du formed a reggae band in Shanghai. She also enjoyed alternative rock and indie pop, which were not transmitted through official channels but circulated in street bootleg tapes. When Du moved to the U.S. and enrolled in the composition program at the Oberlin Conservatory, she developed a style that was not only eclectic, but, in the words of TimeOut New York, showed a "boundless, almost childlike sense of curiosity about the world around her -- she reinvents herself daily, and so does her music." Du earned a PhD in composition from Harvard University and then joined the faculty at the State University of New York at Purchase in 2006. Her music has run the gamut from traditional instrumental genres and opera to popular song, electronics, per
