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, The Flying Dutchman, Othello, 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 Symphony 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, Music Director and Principal Conductor of Macao Orchestra, as well as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor at Trieste Opera, Symphony Orchestra of Florence, Lazio Chamber Orchestra of Rome and Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden.

DONG Dai is an assistant conductor of the NCPA Chorus. She graduated from the Conducting Department of China Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Prof. LI Xincao. She is currently studying for her doctorate in Opera Conducting at the Conducting Department of the China Conservatory of Music. She has worked as a chorus assistant conductor in several NCPA production operas and has cooperated with LI Xincao, LÜ Jia, WU Lingfen and other renowned conductors in the rehearsals of operas including Turandot, Tosca, The Daughter of the Party, The Long March, as well as various concerts. She also participates in the music season planning and management of the NCPA Chorus.

She served as the assistant conductor of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra of China Conservatory of Music and has performed with the China National Symphony Orchestra, Chinese Music Symphony Orchestra, Tianjin Symphony Orchestra, Gansu Opera House, etc. She served as the associate conductor of the opera Carmen (Concert Version), and successfully rehearsed the classic opera La Boheme, opera Tulip and DU Liniang, symphonies My Motherland, Red Classic Symphony, etc. She also held multiple solo concerts.

She has participated in several international conducting master classes, including Ulrich Windfuhr, Dean of Conducting Department of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Prof. Wolfgang Redik from University Mozarteum Salzburg, Alexander Polishchuk, Dean of Conducting Department of the Saint Petersburg State Conservatory in Russia.

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.

Artists associated with the orchestra include Zubin Mehta, Valery Gergiev, Myung-Whun Chung, Fabio Luisi, Christoph Eschenbach, Shao-Chia Lü, ZHANG Xian, Rudolf Buchbinder, Lang Lang, Stephen Kovacevich, Yuja Wang, WANG Jian, Gautier Capucon, Kyung Wha Chung, Vadim Repin, Placido Domingo, Renee Fleming, and Leo Nucci 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”.

The orchestra has gained critical acclaim for its performances in NCPA’s opera productions of not only classical repertoire such as Tristan and Isolde, Der Rosenkavalier, Tosca and Aida, but also newly commissioned works like The Rickshaw Boy, The Long March, and The Jinsha River. In its own orchestral concert season, it has consistently presented creative and diverse programmes. The orchestra also gave the Chinese premieres of works by Toru Takemitsu, et al, commissioned and world premiered many works by Michael Gordon, Augusta Read Thomas, CHEN Qigang, and ZHAO Jiping et al. Their performance of The Ring without Words with its creator, Lorin Maazel, was released on SONY Classics worldwide. In 2019, the orchestra’s recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 was awarded "Best Orchestral Album" at the 2018 Chinese Audiophile Vinyl Award. In 2021, the NCPAO released Beethoven’s Egmont, becoming the first Chinese orchestra to record this masterpiece. In celebration of the tenth anniversary of its Music Director LÜ Jia’s ongoing tenure, the orchestra released two albums in 2022, including Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 and a selection of live recordings conducted by LÜ Jia. In July 2023, the NCPAO released the recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3.

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 Macau. 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”. April 2021 saw the orchestra complete their first six-city domestic tour, which Music Weekly praised as "a series of sophisticated programs in concerts that blew the roof off,” followed by a second tour in March 2023.

China NCPA Chorus is the resident chorus of National Centre for the Performing Arts.

China NCPA Chorus was established on December 8^th, 2009. WU Lingfen, the famous conductor, serves as its chorus master. As the professional artistic performing group that belongs to the highest palace of performing arts, the chorus adheres to the NCPA's guiding principle of "for the people, for art, for the world" and is recognized as a vigorous professional chorus with infinite potential.

Since its establishment, it has participated in more than 50 operas by NCPA such as opera commissions Xishi, A Village Teacher, The Chinese Orphan, The Beautiful Blue Danube, The Ballad of Canal, Rickshaw Boy, Visitors on the Snow Mountain, Sunrise, The Dawns Here Are Quiet, FANG Zhimin, The Long March, Jinsha River, LAN Huahua and Effendi, and Chinese and foreign classic operas such as The White-Haired Girl, The Red Guards on Honghu Lake, Turandot, Carmen, La Traviata, L'Elisir d'Amore, Tosca, Die Fledermaus, Der Fliegende Holländer, Un Ballo in Maschera, Lohengrin, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Otello, Nabucco, Le Nozze di Figaro, L'Italiana in Algeri, Il Trovatore, Cavalleria Rusticana & I Pagliacci, Norma, Don Pasquale, Aida, Rigoletto, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Eugene Onegin, Andrea Chenier, Der Rosenkavalier, Simon Boccanegra, Samson et Dalilah, La Gioconda, Tannhäuser, Macbeth, Rusalka, Lucia di Lammermoor, Tristan und Isolde, Falstaff, Thais, La Figlia del Regimento, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Romeo and Juliet, La sonnambula, Don Giovanni, La fanciulla del West, Les Pecheurs de Peries. Its artistic attainments have won favourable comments from the insiders and audiences. Apart from operas, the chorus has also planned and performed in many large-scale vocal works and theme concerts including Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mahler's Second, Third and Eighth Symphonies, Verdi's Requiem, and Concert to Commemorate the 110^th Anniversary of HUANG Zi's Birth, the opera concerts such as William Tell, Don Juan and many politically significant state level performances including large-scale music and dance epic Road to Rejuvenation, Victory and Peace–Evening Gala to Commemorate the 70^th Anniversary of the Victory of the World Anti-fascist War and the Counter-Japanese War of the Chinese People, Evening Gala for the G20 Hangzhou Summit, the Gala Commemorating the 80^th Anniversary of the Victory of the Long March, the gala "Millennial Road" for the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, the National Day Celebration Performance Go for the Better, The Sons and Daughters of the Chinese Nation and the opening ceremony of Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games. By means of the concerts, the chorus makes more audiences to understand more of its charm and the artistic spirit of its unremitting efforts.

The masters have given high appraisals to the chorus. The late conductor Lorin Maazel said, "It is a Chorus of passion"; conductor Daniel Oren, who was excited after rehearsal, said, "This is the chorus that has the best sound I have ever heard. Young as they are, they are better than many of the choruses in Europe"; conductor Antonio Pappano said, "This is a youthful and passionate chorus that has been well trained to sound wonderful and harmonious"; the world famous tenor Domingo once said, "I am honoured to cooperate with these gifted young artists".

As the singing envoy of zeitgeist, the chorus has always been paying attention to fostering audience, supporting and participating in the artistic education and popularization activities of NCPA. It actively plans and participates in NCPA's Weekend Concert series, Classic Art Lectures series, and appears in more than 40 public benefit events held in schools, communities, enterprises, militar camps and hospitals every year to help popularize elegant art, so as to improve people's aesthetic taste. Meanwhile, the chorus commits itself to introducing NCPA's artistic productions and outstanding classic works to audiences at home and abroad.

Beijing, in the new century, is full of the prosperous atmosphere of elegant art. The young artists of the chorus devote their most vigorous and dynamic youth to the cause of China's opera, and strive for dream and art!