13 Facts About Lui Tsun-Yuen

Lui Tsun-Yuen was a Chinese composer and teacher of Chinese classical music.

Lui Tsun-Yuen is known for his compositions and recordings of the pipa and guqin, and is recognized for bringing Chinese music to Western audiences.

At the age of ten, Lui Tsun-Yuen took up the study of classical stringed instruments, namely the pipa and the guqin.

Lui Tsun-Yuen graduated from Shanghai's King Yee College in 1953 with a degree in general education.

Lui Tsun-Yuen began recording material for the Lyrichord record label, who released Lui's first LP Chinese Classical Masterpieces for the Pipa and Chin in 1960.

Lui Tsun-Yuen traveled to London, where he cut a record for the BBC's permanent collections and soon gained a reputation as the premier ambassador of solo pipa to the West.

Lui Tsun-Yuen briefly fell in with the American popular genre known as exotica and played as part of a Las Vegas stage show called "Oriental Holiday".

Lui Tsun-Yuen adapted western musical compositions for the pipa, such as his transcription of the English folk ballad "Greensleeves".

In March 1961, Lui Tsun-Yuen accepted a position at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he taught in the Department of Ethnomusicology and Systematic Musicology.

At UCLA, Lui Tsun-Yuen began as an associate teacher of Chinese music, classical dance, and opera.

Lui Tsun-Yuen's teaching work was interspersed with performances at the Guggenheim Museum, Hollywood Bowl, Library of Congress, and a tour to Europe, as well as recording sessions that amounted to five albums of music during the 1960s.

Around 1972, Lui Tsun-Yuen met, then married Lu Hong, a professional singer from Hong Kong, and the daughter of the noted Cantonese musician Lu Wencheng, while she was in the US for a tour.

Lui Tsun-Yuen retired from academia in 1991, after 30 years at UCLA.