The Chinese conductor LÜ Jia has received great acclaim internationally. Born into a musical family in Shanghai, LÜ began studying piano and cello at a very young age. He later studied conducting at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, under the tutelage of esteemed conductor ZHENG Xiaoying. At the age of 24, LÜ entered the University of Arts in Berlin, where he continued his studies under Professor Hans-Martin Rabenstein and Robert Wolf. The following year, he was awarded both the First Prize and Jury’s Prize at the Antonio Pedeotti International Conducting Competition in Trento, Italy, and launched his career as a conductor.

Over the past decades, he has conducted over 2,000 orchestral concerts and opera performances in Europe and America, and became the first Asian conductor to serve as the artistic director of a major Italian opera house, as well as the first Chinese conductor to lead Chicago Symphony. He has worked with important productions at the Bayersiche Staatsoper in Munich, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and La Scala in Milan, as well as opera houses in Lausanne, Turin, Rome, Naples, Verona, Venice, Florence, Frankfurt and Stuggart. He has also worked with many renowned orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestra dell’ Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Lyon National Orchestra in France, Finnish Radio Symphony, Hamburg Radio Symphony, Bamberg Symphoniker, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and many others across Europe, America and Australia.

LÜ Jia was the first Chinese conductor to record Felix Mendelssohn’s complete orchestral works, and also the only conductor so far who has recorded the complete works by the important Swedish composer Ingvar Lidholm. His interpretations of German Classical Romanticism and French Impressionists have been praised for their “extremely convincing musical interpretation" with "musical precision and perfect baton technique.” Having directed nearly 50 operas in Italy and Germany, homelands of the European opera tradition, he has also been praised by Italian music critics as “a conductor who understands Italian opera even better than the Italians themselves do”. In 2007, his performance of La Gazza Ladra at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro was voted as European Opera Production of the Year. That same year, in recognition of his important contribution to musical culture in Italy, Lü Jia was awarded the President’s Prize by President Giorgio Napolitano. In 2012, the Domingo International Vocal Competition invited LÜ Jia to serve on the jury, making him the Competition’s first-ever Chinese jury member.

In 2012, LÜ Jia was appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of Opera at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing China. Under his musical direction, NCPA's own productions of Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer, Otello, La Nozze di Figaro, Un Ballo in Maschera, Tosca, and many other works, have received glowing reviews from the international press. With these brand new productions aspiring to high international standards, the NCPA has become a strong contender in the world of opera, and also launched an exciting new chapter in the history of professional opera productions in China. In the meantime, the NCPA Orchestra, under LÜ's baton, has fast established itself as one of the leading new ensembles in the orchestral world in China, presenting impressive performances season after season.

In 2017, LÜ Jia has been appointed as Artistic Director of Music of National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), and Music Director of China NCPA Orchestra. Before taking up his current posts in Beijing, LÜ served as Music Director at Verona Opera, Artistic Director at Symphony Orchestra of Tenerife, as well as Chief Conductor at Trieste Opera, Symphony Orchestra of Florence, Lazio Chamber Orchestra of Rome and Norrkopping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden. In addition to his NCPA music directorship, he is also currently the Music Director and Principal Conductor of Macao Orchestra.

China NCPA Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Beijing. Since its founding in 2010, the orchestra has fast established itself as one of the most adventurous and dynamic orchestras in the country and earned an international reputation through extensive performances abroad.

Numerous world-renowned artists have collaborated with the orchestra, including Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Valery Gergiev, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Fabio Luisi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Leif Segerstam, Gunter Herbig, Shao-Chia Lu, Xian Zhang, Rudolf Buchbinder, Stephen Kovacevich, Khatia Buniatishvili, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, ZHANG Haochen, Kyung-Wha Chung, Vadim Repin, Siqing Lu, NING Feng, WANG Jian, Gautier Capucon, Alison Balsom, Sabine Meyer, Placido Domingo, Leo Nucci, Renee Fleming among many others. Lorin Maazel worked closely with the orchestra before his passing and praised the musicians for their “amazing professionalism and great passion in music”. Christoph Eschenbach also declared it as “one of the finest orchestras in Asia”.

Over the years, the orchestra has gained critical acclaim for its artistic excellence in both concerts and operas. To date they have played in over 60 NCPA opera productions, including classical repertoires such as Tristan and Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Aida, Otello, Nabucco, Tosca, Turandot, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, and newly commissioned works Rickshaw Boy, The Long March, FANG Zhimin, The Jinsha River, Visitors on the Snow Mountain and The Dawns Here Are Quiet. Their live recording of The Ring Without Words with its creator, Lorin Maazel, was released on SONY Music worldwide, the only recording the great maestro ever made with an orchestra from China.

The orchestra has consistently offered creative and diverse programmes through its concert season. As part of its continuous efforts to promote contemporary music, the orchestra presented the China Premieres of major works by John Adams, Toru Takemitsu et al. and gave the World Premieres of dozens of substantial new orchestral works commissioned from composers across the globe, including Qigang Chen, ZHAO Jiping, Michael Gordon, Kalevi Aho, et al. It has also played a significant role in the NCPA's Young Composers Programme, providing a unique platform nurturing the next generation of composers in China.

Alongside its concert series, the orchestra has received widespread praise for its international appearances at the Kissingen Summer Music Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and concerts in many cities in Germany, as well as in Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Daegu, Abu Dhabi, Taipei and Macao. In 2014, the orchestra undertook its first North American tour and returned in 2017, where it performed at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Center, Davies Symphony Hall and other major venues in the US and Canada, under the baton of LÜ Jia. Musical America praised its “joyful confidence and youthful strength”. Concerto Net described it as “a polished, first rate ensemble”.

With its commitment to educational and outreach activities, the orchestra has presented a series of Weekend Matinee Concerts at its home venue, providing local audience specially selected programmes and accessible ticket prices. The orchestra also frequently initiates wide-reaching educational projects in association with educational institutions across the city.

In February 2012, LÜ Jia took up the post of Chief Conductor, succeeding Zuohuang Chen, NCPA’s then Artistic Director of Music as well as a founder of the orchestra. In January 2017, LÜ Jia started serving as NCPA's Artistic Director of Music and the NCPA Orchestra's Music Director.

The Central Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra, affiliated with the Central Conservatory of Music, is an international professional symphony orchestra. All its members are outstanding professional performers from at home and abroad who signed on after passing strict examinations. They interpret ancient and modern Chinese, as well as foreign classics with consummate performing skills, great passion and serious attitude. The orchestra is devoted to training personnel, composing new works and giving performances, conducting international exchanges, attending music festivals and competitions at home and abroad, etc. in order to achieve the goal of building a “double first-class” university and in response to the state’s call for further artistic development and cultivation of high-caliber music talents.

As an international professional ensemble, the orchestra stays true to its original aspirations and forges ahead with a strong will to spread the sound of music toward modernization, toward the world and toward the future by standing its ground as a Chinese culture inheritor and keeping a firm foothold in the contemporary reality of China. Since its establishment, the orchestra has held hundreds of concerts. It is worth nothing that the Inaugural Conference of Music Education Alliance Across the “Silk Road” was held in the Central Conservatory of Music in 2017, and President YU Feng, the director of the orchestra, raised his baton over the orchestra to perform Sheherazade for foreign guests at the opening concert. At the end of 2017, the orchestra rendered “Silk Road Melodies of Harmony”, a contemporary Chinese masterpiece, and Sheherazade at NCPA. The live recording of Sheherazade won Best Instrumental Performance Award at the Tenth “China Gold Record Awards”.

In middle October, 2018, the Italian opera Turandot was presented on the live-action stage at the Palace Courtyard, an ancient building in the Central Conservatory of Music, under the creative direction and leadership of YU Feng. In the context of the Palace Hall, the performance attracted a great many viewers from at home and abroad, becoming a massive hit, winning high praise from the leaders of relevant government departments, foreign embassies and cultural counsellors, as well as amazing both domestic and international music scenes.
The orchestra has given performances in cooperation with dozens of world-famous instrumentalists and singers at music festivals and special concerts held all over the world.

At the beginning and end of 2018, “Contemporary Chinese Music: World Premiere Concert of New Works by Composers at the Central Conservatory of Music” was held at Lincoln Center, New York, receiving high accolades from the global mainstream music market. In December 2019, the orchestra was invited to Carnegie Hall, New York to give a concert of new works, once again making excellent Chinese cultural and musical works heard throughout the North American continent.

At the Celebration Party for the 70^th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China held on October 1^st, 2019, the orchestra appeared in the Tiananmen Square at the invitation of the National Day Headquarters as a major player among the “thousand-person symphony orchestras”. This reflects the relevant government departments’ high attention and great expectations for the Central Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra also showed its strength and artistic features to the world.

As the only professional symphony orchestra in the field of higher education, the Central Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra responds to the Ministry of Education’s call for “elegant art into the campus”. Under the theme of “Approaching Masters, Appreciating Classics, Cultivating Sentiments and Improving Self-cultivation”, it has given content-rich symphony concerts in dozens of colleges and universities nationwide to popularise quality education in musical culture, gaining admiration from hundreds of thousands of teachers and students.

With every of its concerts attracting much attention from insiders, the Central Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra has become the most influential symphony orchestra in China. Through its high-quality performance and brilliant achievements, the orchestra shows its distinctive charm as an international symphony orchestra and its leadership in domestic symphony performance to music lovers at home and abroad.