Zhang Lie is a conductor of considerable renown in China, and enjoyed the accolade as one of the ‘Ten Outstanding Conductors in Chinese Orchestral Music’. He is a member of the Chinese Musicians’ Association, Executive Director of the China Nationalities Orchestra Society, Deputy Secretary General of the Chinese Professional Committee of Conductors and a National Class One Conductor. He is the Resident Conductor of the China Broadcasting Film Symphony Orchestra and the China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra, as well as Composer of the latter’s Research and Development Centre. He was named a Top Performer by the Ministry of Culture. He was the Artistic Adviser and Guest Conductor of the music organisations of many academic institutions, such as the Central Conservatory of Music, China Conservatory of Music, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Henan University and The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Zhang graduated from the Xi’an Conservatory of Music in 1984, and furthered his studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing during the late 1990s. His teachers included Liu Jing, Feng Qi and Professor Yang Hongnian. He also benefited from the coaching of Prof Hans-Dieter Baum of Germany in a conducting master class, where he received insightful advice and was warmly praised.
Zhang was an adjudicator for many competitions, including the All Malaysia Chinese Instrumental Music Competition in 2006 and 2008, the 3rd All China Chinese Instrumental Competition under the auspices of the Wenhua Arts Institutes Awards appointed by the Ministry of Culture of China and the CCTV All China Chinese Instrumental Competition in 2007 appointed by CCTV.
As a composer, Zhang has written close to a hundred works for various performing art forms, spanning music for orchestra, dance drama, film and television scores, Chinese orchestral music, concertos, vocal music etc. His percussion concerto, Guanshan Caprice, has been in the stock repertoire of the Chinese orchestras in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the Mainland. Some of his notable works in recent years are the symphonic dance dramas Song of the Wind and Song of Eternal Sorrow; the film scores The Mute Girl and On Jujube Hill; Taking Flights and Xiao Balang Fantasia for Chinese orchestra; Sons of the Sun, Boat Trackets on the Yellow River and The Lady Generals of the Yang Family for percussion ensemble, etc. Among them, Xiao Balang, Boat Trackers and The Lady Generals of the Yang Family won National Class One Awards and Gold Awards, while On Jujube Hill won the Golden Angel Award at the Chinese American Film Festival.
