Jindong Cai is director of the US-China Music Institute, professor of music and arts at Bard College, and associate conductor of The Orchestra Now (TŌN). Previously, he was a professor of performance at Stanford University. Born in Beijing, Cai received his early musical training in China, where he learned to play violin and piano. He came to the United States for his graduate studies at the New England Conservatory and the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. Cai started his conducting career with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and has worked with orchestras throughout North America and Asia. He is a three-time recipient of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming for Contemporary Music. 

Over his 35-year career in the United States, Cai has established himself as an active and dynamic conductor, scholar of Western classical music in China, and leading advocate of music from across Asia. At Bard, Cai founded the annual China Now Music Festival, which has become a major platform in the West for new works by some of the most important Chinese composers of our time. 

With his wife, Sheila Melvin, Cai has coauthored many articles on the performing arts in China, as well as two books, Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese and Beethoven in China: How the Great Composer Became an Icon in the People’s Republic.

Hailed as one of the most energetic, passionate, and respected pipa masters, Yang Jin graduated from the renowned Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and subsequently taught at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. Yang has won many awards. She won a silver medal at the Global Music Awards, and, in 2004, she earned the prestigious Golden Bell Award for Music in China. Jin collaborates with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble and has performed at esteemed venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Pittsburgh’s Harris Theater. She is an instructor at the University of Delaware’s Master Players Concert Series

and has performed as a soloist with many prominent orchestras, including the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Macao Chinese Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Japan’s Royal City Orchestra, Chinese Orchestra of the Central Conservatory of Music, and Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh. She was also the featured pipa performer at the 2020 Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival for the world premiere of Quintet: Four Inscapes, composed by Ross Edwards. Since 2013, Yang has led various crossover ensembles, including Pittsburgh’s Purple Bamboo Chinese Music Ensemble, the Helio Phoenix Trio, HarmoniZing, Afro Yaqui Music Collective, J4 Quartet, and the Summer Breeze Chinese Jazz Fusion Ensemble.