Lui Tsun-Yuen
Lui Tsun-Yuen (; 1931 – January 8, 2008) was a Chinese composer and teacher of Chinese classical music. He is known for his compositions and recordings of the pipa and guqin, and is recognized for bringing Chinese music to Western audiences. Early life. Lui Tsun-Yuen was born in Shanghai. Though practitioners of music, Lui's grandfather worked as a doctor and his father sold mercantile goods. At the age of ten, Lui took up the study of classical stringed instruments, namely the pipa (a four-stringed lute) and the "guqin" (sometimes called the "qin", "chin", or "Chinese  zither"). His "guqin" teachers included Wu Jinglüe and Hou Zuowu. As a youth, Lui traveled around China to study with many generations of musicians. His brother Lui Pui-Yuen (呂培原, b. 1932 or 1933) was also tutored in stringed instruments, and would later found the Chinese Orchestra of Hong Kong. Career beginnings. Lui graduated from Shanghai's King Yee College in 1953 with a degree in general education. In 1954 he left the People's Republic of China to work in Hong Kong. While there he performed at recitals and on the radio. In 1957 he moved to Brazil to  work for a company run by a friend of the family. While there he made appearances on television, performed for by Brazil's Ministry of Education, and participated in the 1958 São Paulo Music Festival. In 1959 Lui decided to leave the business world, declaring that he "would rather be a poor musician than a rich merchant." He traveled to the United States for a series of performances, beginning with the Interval Concert Series at New York's Carnegie Hall. He also began recording material for the Lyrichord record label, who released Lui's first LP "Chinese Classical Masterpieces for  the Pipa and Chin" in 1960. In 1961 a full U.S. tour included university engagements at Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Wesleyan, and Yale. He also traveled to London, where he cut a record for the BBC's permanent collections and soon gained a reputation as the premier ambassador of solo pipa to the West. Lui briefly fell in with the American popular genre known as exotica and played as part of a Las Vegas stage show called "Oriental Holiday". He also adapted western musical compositions for the pipa, such as his transcription of the English folk ballad "Greensleeves