Zhang Qianyuan
Golden Bell and Wenhua Award–winning suona soloist; faculty at the China Conservatory of Music.
Zhang Qianyuan is among China's most decorated younger virtuosos on the suona — the high-pitched, double-reed wind instrument whose history reaches back to the Tang dynasty and whose distinctive timbre carries from village wedding processions to the modern concert hall. She is Associate Professor in the suona department at the China Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and Deputy Secretary-General of the Suona Professional Committee of the China Traditional Orchestra Society.
Her competition record is one of the most complete in her generation: first prize at both the Golden Bell Award and the Wenhua Award — China's two top national music prizes — and she was the first suona player to receive the National Arts Fund Performing Arts Talent Award, established to identify outstanding individual artists across all classical and traditional disciplines.
Her concert repertoire ranges from the most demanding traditional showpieces — Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix, the classic display piece for the instrument — through contemporary commissioned works that explore the suona's full expressive range, including pieces written specifically to integrate the instrument with symphony orchestra.
In July 2025 she performed Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix in Wang Fujian's symphonic orchestration at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, as soloist with the Guizhou Chinese Orchestra and The Australia Orchestra for Folk Reimagined: East in Symphony.
First prize at both the Golden Bell and Wenhua Awards — China's two top national music prizes.
On Zhang Qianyuan
