YU Feng is a CPC member, professor, doctoral advisor and famous conductor. He is Vice Chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, President of the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM), Vice Chairman of the China Musicians Association, Director of the first National Steering Committee for Aesthetic Education in Colleges and Universities, Deputy Director of the National Steering Committee for Graduate Art Education, President of the Conducting Society of the China Musicians Association, Vice President of the China Committee for Promoting Art Education, and Art Director and Chief Conductor of the Ningbo Symphony Orchestra. He used to be President, Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the China National Opera House and Artistic Director of the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. YU Feng has won many honours and awards - In 2018, he was selected for the National “Ten Thousand Talents Programme” as one of the third leading figures in philosophy and social sciences. In 2017, Scheherazade, recorded under his baton, won the 14^th China Gold Record Award. In 2014, he attended the Forum on Literature and Art chaired by General Secretary XI. That same year, Red Gang Tailors, an opera staged under his baton, won the “Five-One” Project Award for Excellent Work by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee. In the same year, he won the Outstanding Conductor Award at the Second China Opera Festival by the Ministry of Culture. In 2013, he won the Outstanding Director (Choreographer/Conductor) Award at the National Art Ensemble Performance Season by the Ministry of Culture. In 2011, he won the Outstanding Conductor Award at the First Chinese Opera Festival by the Ministry of Culture. In 2008, he was named “Four Kinds of Talents in the First Batch” by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee. In 2001, he was awarded the title of Advanced Individual in National Moral Education for Teachers. In 1998, he won the Capital “Labour Day” Medal and was awarded the title of National Model Teacher. In 1996, he was selected as an expert with outstanding contributions by the State Council and granted government allowances. That same year, he was awarded the title of Young Expert by the Ministry of Culture. In 1994, he won the First Prize and Gold Medal for Best Young Chinese College Teacher by the Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation. In 1991, he won the First Prize in the Portugal International Conducting Competition. In the same year, he won the First Prize in National Conducting Trials.

Prof. YU Feng has invented a China-featured “modern conducting teaching method”, winning the National Second Prize for Education and Teaching Achievements. He was invited to give masterclasses at the College-Conservatory of Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Tokyo University of the Arts and Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, as well as in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In recent years, YU Feng has successively presided over lots of major national, ministerial and provincial projects including R&D of Integrated Technology for Quick Stage Creation & VR Interaction, a project supported by the National Science and Technology Support Plan, Research on Implementing the Party’s Innovation Theory Throughout the Knowledge System of Musicology and Research on the Historical Evolution and Creative Transformation of Traditional Ritual and Music Culture, major special projects of philosophy and social sciences supported by the Ministry of Education, Research & Application of Key Technology for Modular Opera Stage, a project supported by the National Science and Technology Upgrade Plan, Digital Stage Technology Research, a science and technology project supported by the Ministry of Culture, Young Conductor Training, a project supported by the China National Arts Fund, New Version of Opera “Turandot” for the “Belt and Road”, Application of Artificial Intelligence Technology to Music, a national cultural innovation project, etc. He has published 14 papers, including On Theatre Operation and Management from the Perspective of Artistic Creation and Production, Research on Promoting the Continuous Development of Professional Music Education under the Guidance of the Spirit of 19^th National Congress of the CPC, Uniqueness of Music Education in “Belt and Road” Countries and Prospects for Cooperation, etc.

As a conductor, Prof. YU Feng has pioneered in the field of Chinese opera art for many times. He served as Chief Conductor of the China Youth Symphony Orchestra for ten years. From 2001 to 2007, he was Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. In response to the State Council’s call for the reform of the literary and artistic system - with Shenzhen as a pilot city for the reform, he helped to make the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra one of the best symphony orchestras of China. In December 2015, YU Feng founded the Ningbo Symphony Orchestra at the request of the Ningbo Municipal Government. Under his guidance, the Orchestra rapidly developed into a first-class orchestra and was awarded the title of National Advanced Unit of 2021 by the Ministry of Culture. In 2017, he founded the CCOM Centre for the Performing Arts, and established a first-rate professional symphony orchestra, choir and ethnic chamber orchestra, serving as Artistic Director himself. In October 2019, he, as one of the four great conductors, conducted a symphony orchestra of 1,000 musicians at the National Day Party held on Tiananmen Square to celebrate the 70^th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. YU Feng was invited many times to cooperate with famous symphony orchestras from home and abroad, such as the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Berlin Orchestra, Napoli Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra of Portugal, etc. From 2011 to 2014, he worked as Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma. During his tenure as President of the China National Opera House, YU Feng established the “International Opera Season” of the China National Opera House. He also conducted a large number of world classic operas, including La Traviata, Turandot, Carmen, Der Ring Des Nibelungen, etc., and many Chinese opera commissions, such as The White-Haired Girl, DU Shiniang, at home and abroad. In 2015, his Turandot was staged in Puccini’s hometown as the first foreign version to be invited to the Festival Puccini over the past 60 years, setting a precedent for the Festival Puccini. That represented the highest international recognition of China’s achievement in opera art. YU Feng has co-planned, produced and conducted dozens of operas, including Turandot, Scheherazade, Red Gang Tailors, DU Shiniang, Tannhäuser, The Love Story of Rawap, Farewell to My concubine, Der Ring Des Nibelungen, The White-Haired Girl, La Traviata, Carmen, Gotterdammerung, Siegfried, Die Walküre, etc.

As President of the CCOM, YU Feng fully implements the Party’s policies for education, literature and art. Especially after General Secretary XI delivered a speech at the Forum on Literature and Art, he began to fully implement the spirit of the speech, i.e., “art for the people”, in the CCOM. To this end, he founded the Centre for Chinese Music Creation, Centre for the Performing Arts and the Theory Centre, which have created a great many people-centred excellent musical works. In order to actively implement the spirit of Chairman MAO’s speech at the Yanan Forum on Literature and Art and General Secretary XI’s speech at the Forum on Literature and Art, he founded the CCOM Yanan May 23^rd Art Festival and the October 15^th Art Festival to convey the public feelings and sing for the new era. At the Opening Ceremony of the May 23^rd Art Festival, when the Yellow River Cantata had been in existence for 80 years, YU Feng conducted about 500 members of the CCOM Symphony Orchestra, CCOM Choir and Lu Xun Academy of Arts Choir of Yanan in singing the Yellow River Cantata, keeping up the national spirit. The performance was broadcast on CCTV Everlasting Classics, receiving a warm response, watched for more than 2.5 billion times. Meanwhile, facing the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, he actively advocated developing music AI and set up the world’s first discipline entitled “MUSIC AI and Music Information Technology”. In 2019, the discipline was selected as a high-grade, high-precision and advanced subject of Beijing City. It was also selected for the “111 Innovation & AI Base” and “Engineering Research Center of Ministry of Education (Cultivation)”.

YU Feng actively implements aesthetic education. In 2018, he organised master concerts themed “Virtue Cultivation for Human Education and Aesthetic Education for Enlightenment”. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he created “Online Class for Aesthetic Education”, with art used to comfort the people. The Department of Sports, Health and Art Education of the Ministry of Education and the Civilization Office of the Central Communist Party Committee jointly issued a document requesting that all the provinces and autonomous regions organise primary and secondary students to attend the online class. Watched for up to 560 million times on the Internet, it was praised as the world’s largest online art festival by CCTV.

As an educator, YU Feng has established a teacher responsibility for “education”, with a lot of fruitful reforms and explorations carried out for this. As a professor, he has fashioned his students into the best conductors of China, such as ZHANG Xian, YANG Yang, CHEN Lin, XIA Xiaotang, CHEN Bing, ZHU Man, HUANG Yi, YU Lu and YU Ji. 

As a leader in art education, YU Feng is leading the CCOM, the highest academy of music of China, to create a brighter future for modernisation and for the world.

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, Daniele Gatti, Fabio Luisi, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Leif Segerstam, Gunter Herbig, Shao-Chia Lu, ZHANG Xian, Rudolf Buchbinder, Stephen Kovacevich, Khatia Buniatishvili, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, ZHANG Haochen, Víkingur Ólafsson, 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 70 NCPA opera productions, including classical repertoires such as Das Rheingold, Tristan and Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Aida, Otello, Nabucco, Tosca, Turandot, The Marriage of 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. 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 decade tenure of its Music Director LÜ Jia, the orchestra released a selection of live recordings conducted by LÜ Jia in 2022. 2024 sees the NCPAO release the recordings of Bruckner’s complete numbered symphonies.

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, HUANG Ruo, Bright Sheng, Bernd Richard Deutch, 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 cities 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”. In 2021, they appeared in "See Me: A Global Concert" along with world-wide artists, orchestras and choirs as part of the Opening Ceremony of the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda virtual event. In 2022, the orchestra recorded for the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, accompanying billions of viewers to witness the lighting of the Olympic flame. In April 2023, musicians from the orchestra visited South America performing joint concerts with Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil and Instituto Superior de Arte de Teatro Colon in Argentina.

In 2025, the orchestra, led by Myung-Whun Chung, completed its first multi-country European tour, performing at the Edinburgh International Festival, Santander International Festival, and Elbphilharmonie, receiving“immediate and unanimous (ovation)” (Bachtrack), and was hailed by the Hamburger Abendblatt as "cleanly and richly sonorous...The ambition of this orchestra was unmistakably great".

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 2020, the orchestra launched an online concert series drawing an average audience of 30 million viewers. In 2024, the Beijing Youth Orchestra, operated by the NCPAO, participated in World Orchestra Week and made its international debut at Carnegie Hall. April 2021 saw the orchestra complete their first six-city national tour, which Music Weekly praised as "a series of sophisticated programmes in concerts that blew the roof off,” followed by two national tours in March 2023 and March 2025.

In February 2012, LÜ Jia took up the post of Chief Conductor, succeeding CHEN Zuohuang, 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. Beginning in the 2025/26 season, ZHANG Xian assumes the role of Principal Guest Conductor. In 2025, LAI Jiajing was appointed as Resident Conductor.