Huang Ruo
Huang Ruo (黃若, born 1976) is a Chinese-born composer, pianist and vocalist who now lives in the United States. Biography. Born on Hainan Island off the southern coast of China in 1976, Huang was taught piano and composition from the age of six by his father, a well-known Chinese composer. When he was 12, he was admitted to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music where he was instructed in both traditional Chinese and western music by Deng Erbo. In 1995, after winning the Henry Mancini Award at the International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland, he continued  his education in the United States at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and at the Juilliard School in New York City where he studied composition with Samuel Adler, receiving a doctorate. In 2001, Huang was one of the founding members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, an orchestral group of some 30 musicians which often performs works by European, Latin American, and Asian composers. In 2005, he founded the performance company, Future in Reverse (FIRE), specializing in multimedia and cross-genre projects. In 2010, Huang's composition "The Yellow Earth" won the Celebrate Asia! composition competition. It was performed  by the Seattle Symphony at a concert in January 2011. The piece is a rearrangement of the third movement of his sheng concerto "The Color Yellow" which brings together music produced by a Chinese instrument accompanied by a Western orchestra. Musical style. Huang Ruo's aesthetic neologism is his attempt to "define connections between space, time, and sound. It is related to architecture and modern art in general, which I am a big lover of." Describing dimensionalism in detail Ruo writes, Christina Mamakos, who has created an installation combining Huang's music with a video in June 2011, defines the  technique he calls "dimensionalism." In aesthetic terms, she defines the term as "Using an inventive musical voice which draws equal inspiration from Chinese folk, western avant-garde, rock and jazz, Ruo creates a seamless series of musical works that do not necessarily exist in the sound world of our daily life."