Carnegie Hall

Lü Jia is artistic director of music of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) and music director of the China NCPA Orchestra, prior to which he was music director of the Arena di Verona, artistic director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, and music director and chief conductor at the Macao Orchestra and Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi.

Mr. Lü has conducted nearly 2,000 orchestral concerts and opera performances in Europe and the US. He has worked with such renowned opera houses and symphony orchestras as Teatro alla Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Munich Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Orchestre National de Lyon.

A highly acclaimed opera conductor, Mr. Lü has led more than 50 productions internationally. As the first Asian conductor appointed as music director of a national opera house in Italy, he has been praised by critics as “a conductor who has a deeper understanding of Italian operas than the Italians themselves do.” In 1989, he was awarded both first prize and jury prize at the Antonio Pedrotti International Conducting Competition in Trento, Italy. In 2007, the Italian President bestowed the President’s Prize on Mr. Lü for his exceptional contribution to Italian culture. That same year, the production of La gazza ladra that he conducted at the Rossini Opera Festival, held in Pesaro, the composer’s hometown, was voted “Opera Production of the Year” in Europe.

Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso, Wu Man is a soloist, educator, and composer who gives her lute-like instrument—whose history in China spans more than 2,000 years—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. She has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create global awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions. Projects she has initiated have resulted in the pipa finding a place in new solo and quartet works; concertos; operas; chamber, electronic, and jazz music; and theater productions, film, dance, and visual-arts collaborations. She has performed in recital and with major orchestras around the world, and she is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as the Kronos and Shanghai quartets and The Knights. She is a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble. She has appeared on nearly 50 recordings, many of which received Grammy awards or nominations. In the 2023–2024 season, she premiered a new pipa concerto by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Du Yun, entitled Ears of the Book, with The Knights at Carnegie Hall and with the Detroit Symphony.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Ms. Wu studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. At age 13, she was recognized as a child prodigy and a national role model for young pipa players. In 2023, she was honored with both a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), one of the US’s most prestigious honors in folk and traditional art, and with the Asia Society’s Asia Arts Game Changers Award. She was Musical America’s 2013 “Instrumentalist of the Year,” marking the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed on a player of a non-Western instrument. She is a visiting professor at her alma mater the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a distinguished professor at the Zhejiang and the Xi’an conservatories. In 2021, she received an honorary doctorate of music from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Beijing Youth Orchestra was established by the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) and Beijing Municipal Education Commission in 2024 as a representation of the friendship and cooperation between NCPA and Carnegie Hall, two major performing arts institutions in China and the US. The youth symphony orchestra is operated by China NCPA Orchestra.

More than 130 young and passionate musicians from the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing 101 Middle School, and The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China have come together to form this orchestra. These young musicians showcase the vitality, vision, and talent in modern China and reflect the energetic, open-minded, and innovative spirit of the capital city Beijing.

Beijing Youth Orchestra, conducted by NCPA’s artistic director of music, Lü Jia, and featuring internationally renowned pipa player Wu Man, will perform on the stages of NCPA and Carnegie Hall this summer, unveiling a new journey of musical and cultural exchange. At Carnegie Hall’s World Orchestra Week (WOW!), they will act as cultural ambassadors from China to establish ties through music and exchange ideas with extraordinary young people from around the globe to build a better and more loving world through music.