ZHU Lin
ZHU Lin is Chinese first-class performer, member of China Film Association and member of China Film Society of Performing Art. She graduated from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in 1978. She was keen on art since childhood, learned dance and gymnastics, and studied in Performance Department of Beijing Film Academy in the 1980s.
In 1982, ZHU Lin starred in the feature film Legend of the Theatrical Troupe jointly directed by YANG Gaisen and ZHANG Lukun. She earned fame with the role of “King of the Women's Kingdom” in the Chinese classic TV series Journey to the West (1986 Edition).
In 1987, ZHU Lin won the “Best Actress Award” in the 5th “China Golden Eagle TV Art Award” by starring in a TV series Triumphal Returns in Midnight directed by YOU Xiaogang. Also in 1987, ZHU Lin played the role of opera performer ”Wenyan” in the film Far from War, and won Silver Prize of the 10th Asia, Africa and Latin America Film Festival of the Former Soviet Union and Special July Prix of the 12th Sarso Film and TV Festival in Italy. In 2000, she was the winner of ”The Favourite Performer Award” for TV Series on CCTV. In 2010, World Artists Association gave her the “Outstanding Contribution Award for Performance of Chinese Artists Award”.
Over the past three decades since she blazed a professional path, she has played roles with different characters, undulating fates and sharp-cut personalities on screen. As “King of the Women’s Kingdom” in TV series Journey to the West, she succeeded in playing this noble but tender role, demonstrated the dignity, elegance, softness and charms of the oriental woman and became a classic cherished by audiences. She successfully played the role of female soldier “JIANG Man” in the TV series Triumphal Returns in Midnight, who dedicates herself to love. Therefore, ZHU Lin won numerous awards. Afterwards, ZHU Lin has risen abruptly based on accumulated strength and self-challenge in terms of creation. She played the role of educated young girl ”LIU Lin” with twists and turns of the destiny in Encountering Yesterday which reviews the life story of educated youth. She was also an infatuated woman “Shuangchi” who pursues true love in past and present in Crang Crying Of Qin People, cruel and lonely “Female Drug Lord” in Red and Black 2000, generous and kind “Mother in the Mountain” in Meditations on the White Birch Forest, “Madam XIN” supporting century-old big family in Luogu Alley, ”Female Boss” in The VI Group of Fatal Case...These images spans over all historical epochs and blends ZHU Lin’s personal charms with role charm to sparkle artistic brilliance.
In recent years, ZHU Lin focused her career on dramas. In 2012, she starred in the drama Looking for a Playwright in commemoration of Mr. CAO Yu. In 2014, she once again went beyond herself and starred in Doubt, a classic drama of Broadway, in which she played the role of old-fashioned, paranoid and alert “Sister Aloysius” with solid faith.
In addition, ZHU has plunged in the endless world of art. She took an active part in broadcasting and reading circles and presented The Phantom of the Opera, David Copperfield and other excellent broadcasting and reading works.
Sonia Wieder-Atherton
For Sonia Wieder-Atherton, music has always been a laboratory. Her unbounded research has taken her from one repertoire to another, from one discovery to the next. Constantly exploring crisscrossing musical avenues, she unravels the received wisdom in a relentless pursuit of meaning.
She was born in San Francisco of a mother of Romanian origin and an American father. She grew up in New York and then Paris, where she enrolled at the Conservatoire National Supérieur, studying with Maurice Gendron. She very soon found herself investigating form and sound, already seeking a language that could be a common denominator for all music.
At 19 she studied with Natalia Shakhovskaya at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. Her years there left an indelible mark, for, in addition to receiving a top class education, where she took away a special relationship with time, stories and man.
Returning to France she has never stopped querying the repertoire. At 25, she won the Rostropovich Competition. Sonia Wieder-Atherton works as tirelessly as she experiments. She enjoys nothing better than to decipher the language of contemporary composers like Pascal Dusapin, Georges Aperghis, and Wolfgang Rihm, all of whom she has been prompt to champion and who have written for her. Researching the classical repertory with equal devotion, her curiosity sets her interpretations apart.
Returning to France she has never stopped querying the repertoire. At 25, she won the Rostropovich Competition. Sonia Wieder-Atherton works as tirelessly as she experiments. She enjoys nothing better than to decipher the language of contemporary composers like Pascal Dusapin, Georges Aperghis, and Wolfgang Rihm, all of whom she has been prompt to champion and who have written for her. Researching the classical repertory with equal devotion, her curiosity sets her interpretations apart.
She performs as a soloist under the guidance of numerous conductors, notably: the Paris Orchestra, the French National Orchestra, the Belgian National Orchestra, the Liège Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonia, the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Luxembourg, the NDR Orchestra in Hanover, the REMIX Ensemble, Les Siècles, Asko/ Schönberg... and works regularly with musicians like Imogen Cooper and Raphaël Oleg, with whom she records and performs in concert.
In recent years she has instigated a wide range of projects conceived as complete musical and visual experiences Jewish songs, a cycle for cello and piano inspired by the art of the Hazzan; Songs of Slavic Lands, for cello and instrumental ensemble, conceived as a journey from Russia to Central Europe; Vita, for cello solo and three cellos, in which she tells the story of Angioletta-Angel via two timeless geniuses, Monteverdi and Scelsi; Odyssey for Cello and Imaginary Choir, in which a woman, alone with her cello, accompanied by a soundtrack, faces the elements: wind, waves, chaos, storms; Little Girl Blue, from Nina Simone.For Sonia Wieder-Atherton, playing Bach, Beethoven, Jewish songs or Nina Simone, is the same movement, asking the same questioning: that of a voice that can never be understood if it is heard in isolation.
Sonia Wieder-Atherton constantly pushes back the boundaries, venturing with her cello into other artistic forms, with projects like From the East in Music, a show designed with footage from Chantal Akerman’s film D’Est, and two projects with celebrated actresses: Night Dances, with Charlotte Rampling, featuring works by Benjamin Britten and Sylvia Plath, and Marguerite Duras' Navire Night with Fanny Ardant. Exile, a creation for cello, piano and eight voices. Chantal, An installation, created in 2018 in Paris, in the form of dialogue between the cello and Chantal Akerman in his first film Blow up my City.
In 2011, she received the Bernheim Foundation Award, which each year acknowledges three creative works in the fields of the arts, literature and science. In 2015, she was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.