Gao Hong, Pipa

August 20, 2024

Gao Hong graduated from Beijing’s elite Central Conservatory of Music. Since coming to the United States, she has performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, Smithsonian, and at festivals in Paris, Caen, Milan, and Perth. She has presented concertos for the pipa with the Minnesota Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Women’s Philharmonic (San Francisco), among others. In 2017 she became the first Chinese musician to play the National Anthem at an NBA basketball game when she did so on pipa for the Minnesota Timberwolves in Minneapolis.

Gao Hong has received numerous top awards and honors in China and U.S. In 2005 Gao Hong became the first traditional musician to be awarded the prestigious Bush Artist Fellowship, and in 2019 she became the only musician in any genre to win five McKnight Artist Fellowships for Performing Musicians. She is the author of the first pipa method book written in English that was published and distributed worldwide by Hal Leonard, the world’s largest music print publisher.

As a composer, she has received commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra, The President’s Own United States Marine Band, American Composers Forum, and Walker Art Center, among others. Her composition for solo pipa, Flying Dragon, won a 2012 Global Music Award – Award of Excellence Solo Instrumental (Gold Medal).

In 2022, Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul, Minnesota proclaimed April 3, 2022 to be “Gao Hong Day in the City of St. Paul” in honor of Gao Hong’s milestone concert at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts – “50 YEARS OF MAKING MUSIC WITH FRIENDS”.

China’s foremost music publication, “People’s Music,” wrote of Gao Hong that “like the famous Luoyang peony, she has gradually emerged as the best of all beautiful flowers…her performance has extremely strong artistic appeal and belongs under the category of ‘fine wine’…the more you listen, the more beautiful it gets.”