-- Gang Situ
Music is in the blood for composer Gang Situ, whose mother was a mezzo-soprano with the Shanghai Opera and whose father was the music director and conductor of the Shanghai Philharmonic. Born in 1954 in Shanghai, Situ studied piano and violin at an early age. But as a teenager, Situ -- whose given name means "steel" -- was swept up in China's Cultural Revolution and was sent for a four-year "reeducation" that found him harvesting rice and gathering firewood in the countryside. Ironically, the experience would indirectly bolster his love of music, as he and his fellow workers would secretly listen to banned recordings of Western artists, such as David Oistrakh playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.
In 1985, Situ arrived in the United States. He had only $40 to his name and spoke only a few words of English. By 1994, just nine years later, he had attracted notice as a composer with his Double Concerto for Violin and Erhu, which has since been performed by more than a dozen orchestras around the world, including the San Francisco Symphony.
Read more on the KQED Spark website.
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