Cheng Yu (musician)

Cheng Yu is a musician. She is internationally renowned in Pipa, the Chinese four-stringed pear-shaped lute, but also plays the Guqin, the seven-stringed zither, and is a virtuoso, scholar and specialist of Chinese music.

She gained a BMus in China and an MMus in the United Kingdom. She completed her PhD studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London on Ancient Xi'an Music and regularly performs throughout the UK.

She plays, records and researches widely on traditional and contemporary Chinese music as well as cross-cultural music collaborations in the UK, Europe and other places. In her recent project in 2005, she successfully re-created a modern version of the lost Tang Dynasty five-stringed pipa.

She is the founder of the UK Chinese Ensemble in 1994 and the London Youlan Qin Society in 2003.

Biogaphie

Cheng Yu was born in Beijing, but grew up in Gansu Province in Northwest China when her family was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. She studied the southern Pudong style of pipa with her father from the age of seven and was further trained by pipa masters in the north-western Pinghu style later. She also studied and graduated with distinction in the Xi'an Conservatory of Music in 1987 for the guqin. She won the "outstanding pipa player" award in China in the same year she was selected as a pipa soloist in the China Central Orchestra of Chinese Music in Beijing.

She moved to London in the 1990s and currently teaches pipa and guqin as well as research at SOAS, University of London.

The five stringed ''pipa''

Cheng Yu researched and created a contemporary model for a pipa with five strings based on the study of old Tang dynasty ''pipa''s and lutes from the East Asian cultures.

Collaborations and projects

*Asian Music Circuit: Chinese Music Summer School from 2003
*ARC Music
*SOAS
*Music House
*Zomba
*Extreme Music
*Realworld
*Damon Albarn
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*Tan Dun
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*Xu Yi
*Barrington Pheloung
*Randy Edelman
*Carl Jenkins
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*Fabien Tehericsen
*London Sinfonietta 1996
*Lyon Ensemble Orchestral Contemporian 2000-01
*Avignon Orchestra 2003
*Edingburgh String Quartet 2004
*Youth Music: Faber Music Songbook 2005
*Jan Kuiper
*Purbayan Chatterjee
*Zoumana Kiarra
*Jan Hendrickse
*Tim Garside
*Stephen Dydo
*Gillian Carcas
*Gyewon Byeon