Abstract / About the project

The two book chapters, Chapter 6 - From ‘Folk Cure’ to Catharsis: Alexander Tcherepnin and New Chinese Piano Music, and Chapter 7 - Partnering with the Shanghai Arts Community: Aaron Avshalomov and Symphonic-Theatrical Experimentations, as well as the collaborative volume Networking the Russian Diaspora: Russian Musicians and Musical Activities in Interwar Shanghai (Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific), present groundbreaking documentation of Shanghai’s Russian music community before 1949. The community was instrumental in bringing Western music to modern China, and Tcherepnin and Avshalomov were the only two non-Chinese composers to make major contributions to twentieth-century Chinese musical development both for their experimental processes and the vital networks they formed with Chinese musicians who would assume positions of national leadership. New details unearthed through my primary research document these networks for the first time and show how complex private lives underpinned the cross-cultural, professional achievements of both composers.

The two articles are published as two book chapters in: Networking the Russian Musical Diaspora in Inter-War Shanghai co-authored by Hon-Lun Yang, Simo Mikkonen, and John Winzenburg, to be published by the University of Hawaii Press in September 2020.