Ge Gan-Ru has always sought to bind the sounds and character of his native Chinese music to Western techniques, and his solo piano music provides some of the best examples. Based on folk songs – either transcribed or presented in fragments – Twelve Preludes for Piano is a major early work heard here in its revised version. In Ancient Music he employs the prepared piano to evoke the intimate sounds of Chinese instruments such as the qin (a horizontal lute) to create a unique acoustic effect, a quality that also permeates Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! and Hard, Hard, Hard! written for toy piano.

Yiming Zhang is a dedicated performer of Chinese piano works, as well as an active lecturer. Zhang has also translated and published several books from English to Chinese, including Carl Czerny’s On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, Alban Berg’s piano sonatas, as well as Durand’s edition of Debussy’s piano works. Yiming Zhang was awarded his doctoral degree in piano performance from Temple University, where he studied with Harvey Wedeen (piano) and Lambert Orkis (fortepiano, contemporary music, and chamber music). He currently teaches at the piano department of Xinghai Conservatory of Music.