Zhu Jian'er Zhu Jian'er

Zhu Jian'er (Chinese: 朱践耳; pinyin: Zhū Jiàn'ěr; (October 18, 1922 – August 15, 2017) was a Chinese composer. 

Zhu was born in Tianjin and brought up in Shanghai, and lived in Jing County, Anhui, China. He began composing in 1940 and pursued composition studies at the Moscow Conservatory in 1955. He is a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory. He has composed for both Western and Chinese instruments and his works have been performed around the world. In 2000 he was commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project to compose Silk Road Reverie.

His 1950 revolutionary work Days of Emancipation (翻身的日子, Fānshēn de Rìzi; for banhu and Chinese orchestra) is well known in the West from its appearance on the 1981 CBS Masterworks compilation Phases of the Moon: Traditional Chinese Music.

A native of Jing County, Anhui Province, Zhu Jian'er was born in Tianjin and brought up in Shanghai. He taught himself music when he was studying at the high school. In 1940 he began to write art songs, drama scores and wind music. At the end of 1949 he started the composition of film scores. In 1955 he went to the Soviet Union and began to pursue the advanced course at the Composition Department of Moscow Conservatory or Music. After graduation in 1960 he returned to his motherland and worked successively at Shanghai Film Studio and Shanghai Opera. Since 1975 he has been working as a resident composer at Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. He also holds a concurrent post as a professor or composition at Shanghai Conservatory or Music.

As a prominent Chinese composer, Zhu has been in pursuit or originality and has taken pains to organically combine the western composition techniques with the Chinese musical thinking, idioms and style. He has been continuously developing the profoundity of the connotation or his compositions and broadening the range or their subjects. He has been continuously transcending himself. All these have resulted in the formation or his specific style. He is a conspicuous composer in the contemporary Chinese music world.

His important works include five symphonies, symphonic cantata Heroic Poems, piano solos, chamber music, Chinese traditional instrumental ensemble and others.

His Symphonie Fantasia won the Excellent Composition Prize at All China Symphonic Composition Appraisal in 1981.Symphony No.4 won the Grand Prize at Queen Marie Jose Competition for Music Composition in Switzerland in 1990. In 1991 he won the Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Art and Literature, the supreme prize or Shanghai municipal government.

Quite a lot or his works, especially his symphonic works, were premiered and won prizes at the previous Shanghai Spring Music Festivals. Also, they have been performed in various countries such as the Soviet Union. Japan. Germany, Sweden, Romania, the United States and the Philippines, and have a certain influence in the international musical circles.

Zhu died on August 15, 2017 in Shanghai.