Guoping Jia

Guoping Jia was born in 1963 in Shanxi, (China). From 1980-84 he studied music at the Shanxi Jin Opera Academy in Taiyuan. From 1984-87 he was head of the music department at the House of Culture in Luliang, after which (1987-91) he studied composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. From September 1991 he was a lecturer in harmony and composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Jia studied composition with Helmut Lachenmann at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst State (University of Music and the Performing Arts) Stuttgart from 1994-98 as a DAAD scholarship holder, from where he took part in the Darmstadt Summer Courses in 1996. Since September 1998 he has been Professor of Composition and Analysis of New Music at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. As a composer, Guoping Jia has built up his own musical language systems after many years of development. He has always tried to combine aspects of the new composition techniques or the aesthetics of new music with the peculiarities of Chinese and to find his own way.

The musical characters of his works have a strong relationship with the aesthetics of Chinese traditional art, in which beauty also has a lot to do with emptiness, restraint and delicacy. Strong emotions and exaggerated increases are rather rare.

This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programs with the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes/Sikorski.