The call to music came to Jin Xiang when a youngster of only seven. After he and friends had been playing vigorously one hot summer afternoon, they rested in the shade of a tree, yearning for water. Suddenly Jin heard, wafted on the breeze, a beautiful female voice singing a Chinese folk song. He recounts, " The voice was so soft and sweet, it was like very cool water entering my hot heart. I was so deeply excited I could not control myself and cried the whole night." It was thus that Jin "discovered that music is my life", that he could not live without it. Since then his only desire has been "to compose beautiful music for human beings." This has remained his goal despite life's many trials and tribulations.

Immediately after that astonishing event Jin began to learn the piano and the erhu in the decrepit music room of the village school for teachers where his father was the principal. That piano was the only one in the village. When just eleven, having been admitted to the children's section of the National Conservatory of Music in Nanjing, he shouldered his knapsack and left his parents' home. In Nanjing he studied the cello and violin. Upon graduation, at seventeen, he became a research intern for the Nationalities Music Research Institute. Traveling throughout China, he grew familiar with the music of every national minority in the country. Two years later he was admitted to the composition department of the Central Music Conservatory in Beijing. There he received a systematic and complete training in composing. In 1959 he graduated with High Distinction. But he had been labeled a "rightist" two years earlier during the "anti-rightist" movement. One "crime" had been introducing his classmates to the music of the Western composer Stravinsky. Jin was denied his diploma and immediately sentenced to do forced labor in exile in the northwest province of Xinjiang.

His first assignment was grueling work on a local government farm. Among his tasks were back-breaking planting and harvesting and in the winter the hazardous felling of trees, as well as cleaning toilets, making bricks and building houses. After some years he was ordered to work for a small cultural group in Aksu, in southern Xinjiang. There he did farm work in the spring and summer, and in the winter taught young people composition. When the Cultural Revolution eased somewhat in 1972, following the mysterious death of Lin Biao, one of the revolutionary leaders, Jin was also allowed to teach instrumental playing and conducting. That year he composed a work, Sengle, (Desert Man) for the song and dance group. It proved so popular, Jin was transferred in 1972 from Aksu to Urumchi, the capital of Xinjiang. There he worked for a provincial level song and dance group. He had to continue doing menial physical labor, but also taught, composed, and conducted. A one-hour work, A Breeze Outside, his first opera, was performed by the Urumchi group in 1979.

When the Cultural Revolution finally came to an end a full twenty years after Jin had been exiled, he was politically rehabilitated, and his right to compose was restored. But he was in despair. How could he start creating music, his dream of a lifetime, when his original foundation in music had been badly eroded, and he was unfamiliar with the new techniques. So he began all over again, working furiously to restore the old and to add the new. Meanwhile, within months of his return to Beijing, auditions were held for the post of conductor of the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. Jin was the one chosen. Five years later he was offered a position as Professor of Composition at the China Music Conservatory, where he is still teaching.

Jin composes in many genres, and has won many awards. He has written operas, cantatas, symphonies, concerti, chamber music, and background music for films and television. His works combine contemporary Western techniques with an Eastern aesthetic. As a conductor, his repertoire includes Western classical and Chinese traditional and contemporary music. His conducting has been characterized as "powerful and clear". He has conducted in Canada and the U.S. as well as in Asia. As a music critic, his articles and essays often result in much excited discussion. His second volume of essays, titled Perplexities and Explorations - Thoughts of a Composer, was published in Shanghai in March 2003.

Jin's first grand opera, Savage Land, premiered in Beijing in 1987. It had its American premiere in 1992 when the Washington Opera presented eleven performances at The Kennedy Center. The only Chinese opera ever performed in the U.S. by a standing opera company, it received both high critical praise and popular acclaim. (Washington Post: "He is a melodist of impressive ability, pouring forth in rapid succession impassioned love duets, an idiot's nonsense song, a prayer to Buddha …monologues of anguish, despair, thirst for revenge and raw fear, each bearing the polished touch of a master." New York Times: "He wields these varied styles and weds them to one another and to his native idiom with wondrous skill and subtlety.") Savage Land had its European premiere in 1997 in Germany, followed by presentation in Switzerland. In 2000 it was produced again in Beijing, to much public excitement and general acclaim.

Another opera, The King of Chu, premiered in Shanghai in 1994. Again fine reviews. (China Daily: "The composer's virtuosity makes the opera a memorable musical and also visual experience. The composer's … successful combination of western musical composing techniques with oriental ones …He [has] created the recitative of modern Chinese opera". Beijing Review: "…a masterpiece to succeed Savage Land.") The Shanghai Opera will present a revival of The King of Chu in the near future.

Jin's fourth opera, Taxiwayi -- The Beloved Troubadour, will receive its premiere by the Central Opera in Beijing. It is a tale of the love of a young man, a virtuoso on the rawapu (a native instrument of the minority Uighur people) and a young woman, a singer who comes of a family from a higher class, and the struggles that follow as they persevere in their love despite her family's opposition. (Jin knows the music of the Uighurs exceedingly well as he lived among them during his twenty years of exile from Beijing.)

Yang Gui Fei, Jin's latest opera, was commissioned by the China-Japan Opera Company. It is an historical work about the last emperor of the T'ang dynasty and his favorite concubine, Yang Gue Fi. The dramatic and poignant story plays out in both China and Japan. The opera will premiere in Beijing May 30, 2004. It will then be translated into Japanese and presented in Tokyo.

The first opera by Jin with an English libretto, Beautiful Warrior, a commissioned chamber opera, premiered in New York City in 2002. It is based on a British children's novel with a Chinese theme, and while it is a humorous story it embodies moral issues.

Among Jin's non-operatic vocal compositions are cantatas. Nanjing Lament, commemorating the victims of the 1937 Nanjing massacre, premiered with over three hundred performers at Carnegie Hall on December 7, 1997. Five Songs from SHI-JING, an earlier cantata, has been performed many times in several countries, including the United States. Jin's many symphonies and concerti include works written for both Traditional Instrument orchestra and Western orchestra. Among the latter are a symphony, Asking the Sky, and a symphonietta, Wu - A Traditional Oriental Folk Ritual. His chamber works range from solos to considerably larger works such as Sacrificing to Heaven, for chamber ensemble and voices (premiered in 1999 at Merkin Concert Hall in New York), and Song of the New Century, for four operatic soloists and chorus (premiered in 2001 at Lincoln Center, New York). A later chamber work, The Cold Water of Yi-Shue River -- For Fourteen Musicians, premiered in the Grame Concert Hall at the Lyon Opera House in October 2003.

Jin is a legal resident of the U.S. His professional activities since he first came to the U.S. in 1988 have included: Visiting Scholar at The Juilliard School, where he worked with the world renowned composers Milton Babbitt and John Corigliano; and Composer-in-Residence at The Washington Opera. He has also lectured and held master classes at several U.S. venues. At the same time he has remained active as Professor of Composition at the China Music Conservatory in Beijing. He is much involved in music exchange activities between China and the U.S., and is Founder and Artistic Director of the U.S. incorporated nonprofit tax-exempt East-West Music Exchange Association (EWMEA). The mission of EWMEA is to promote international understanding through the bridge of music. For further information about Jin Xiang, his compositions, CDs, and scores, email Dr. Edna Ehrlich at ednaehrlich88@yahoo.com.