Bright Sheng (Chinese: 盛宗亮; pinyin: Shèng Zōngliàng; born December 6, 1955) is a Chinese-born American composer, pianist and conductor. Sheng has earned many honors for his music and compositions, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001; he also was a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist.[1] His music has been commissioned and performed by virtually every major American symphony orchestra,[2] in addition to the Orchestre de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra among numerous others. His music has been performed by such musicians as the conductors Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Christoph Eschenbach, Charles Dutoit, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Slatkin, Gerard Schwarz, David Robertson, David Zinman, Neeme Järvi, Robert Spano, Hugh Wolff; the cellists Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, and Alisa Weilerstein; the pianists Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, and Peter Serkin; the violinists Gil Shaham and Cho-Liang Lin; and the percussionist Evelyn Glennie.[3]
Born in Shanghai, he studied the piano at the age of four from his mother. He graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory and went on to continue his education at Queens College and Columbia University. In 1995, he became a part of the faculty at the University of Michigan.
Most of Sheng's musical career has followed the path of mixing Western cultures and Asian cultures into his pieces, leading his music to be performed in both Asia and the United States, as well as around the world.[4]