Founded in 1950 under the Shaanxi Provincial Administration of Radio and Television, the Shaanxi Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra is one of the earliest professional Chinese music ensembles since the founding of new China. With the mission of promoting the culture of Chinese music, the Orchestra has gradually built up its own musical style encompassing the characteristics of China as well as Shaanxi, making important contributions to the inheritance and development of Chinese music, as well as to the enhancement of the cultural confidence of the nation.
Since the 1980s, the Orchestra has been dedicated to the transmission and innovation of Chinese music. It has commissioned renowned composers in China to compose outstanding works of regional characteristics, such as Qin Tunes, Jiaoban, The Silk Road from Chang’an, and Morning Star Lilies Forever. Among them, the full-scale orchestral work The Silk Road from Chang’an was awarded the first funding from the China National Arts Fund in 2014. Under the leadership of Zhang Lie, then Artistic Director, the Orchestra has gradually evolved into a professional orchestra with a quantum leap in its artistic level. In October 2017, the Orchestra performed Morning Star Lilies Forever composed by Wang Danhong, at the concert hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing under the baton of Yan Huichang. It marked a significant step forward towards being one of the top Chinese
orchestras in China. With the support from leaders at all levels, the Orchestra has given many concerts, the notable ones being ‘Guofeng Qinyun’ and ‘The Chinese Root’. It participated in gala events such as the Silk Road International Arts Festival, the Silk Road International Film Festival, the 11th China Arts Festival, and the Shaanxi Arts Festival. The exposure gave the Orchestra a lot of attention and helped build its own brand in the music world.
In 2018, Morning Star Lilies Forever was named a 2019 awardee by the China National Arts Fund as a communication and cultural exchange project. The work was performed in the National Outstanding Chinese Orchestras Show organized by the Department of Arts of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China, and won the title as “the First National Outstanding Chinese Orchestra”. This cultural gem of a production is hailed as “an epoch-making work of excellence”.
Over the years, the Orchestra has groomed many fine artists, such as vocalist Yuan Enfeng (who was names “an Epochal Paragon” by the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2015), composers Sun Shao and Wang Jianmin, bamboo flutists Ma Di and Zhang Yanwu, banhu virtuoso Ji Zhe, and erhu virtuosi Yu Fenyang and Jin Wei. These artists share the mission of developing the culture of Chinese music and have made tremendous contribution in their respective professional domains.
