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Jing Xia

Jing Xia is a guzheng performer, intercultural arts promotor, Chinese music scholar and educator. Xia has received numerous awards and accolades, including the prestigious Golden Bell Award; the Master of a Chinese Traditional Musical Instrument designation by the California State Senate; the Master Artist Award by Southwest Folklife Alliance; the 2022 Top 10 Outstanding Chinese American Youth Award; and the 30 Selected Leaders for the Future by the All American Chinese Youth Federation. She was selected to be featured in the 2016 Cultural and Artistic Achievement stamp and postcard series released by China Post.

As a performing artist, Xia has been invited to perform concerts with the “Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra” along with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Beijing Symphony Orchestra, China National Traditional Orchestra, Huaxia Chinese Orchestra, Chandler Symphony Orchestra, and Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra. She has traveled on concert tours to Switzerland, New Zealand, Spain, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Burma, Bangladesh, and the USA. 

Aside from her devotion to the culture of traditional music, she is also enthusiastic about exploring new music, techniques, idioms, sounds, genres, cultures, and other aspects of musical perception. Her intercultural music project, the Duo Chinoiserie, seeks to build new musical bridges between the East and West. The award-winning album CHINOISERIE includes new works written for the Duo by renowned composers. Xia’s performing style of the guzheng is calm and subtle, yet very powerful and emotional. 

Xia started her guzheng studies when she was four years old. Since then, she has delved into the world of guzheng music and studies with many famous Chinese guzheng masters. She holds a Master of Musicology and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the China Conservatory of Music. She is a Ph.D. candidate of Applied Intercultural Arts Research with an emphasis in applied ethnomusicology and health promotion science at the University of Arizona. Her research specializations include applied and intercultural approaches to the study of music, culture, and wellness; traditional music as a means to enhance the wellbeing of the Chinese diaspora; and the study of the Qing zheng score Shiliu Ban from “Xiansuo Beikao.” She has published articles in the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), and her research has been selected for presentation at the Association of Chinese Music Research (ACMR) meeting, the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) conference, and the National Organization of Arts in Health conference.

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Elaine Douvas

Elaine Douvas, oboe, has been principal oboe of the Metropolitan Opera since 1977 and is on the oboe faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Since 1982 she has also served as oboe instructor at The Juilliard School and Woodwind Department Chairman there since 1997. Her career highlights include the Strauss Oboe Concerto with the MET Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, James Levine conducting, and Dutilleux's Les Citations with the MET Chamber Ensemble. Her three CDs include a solo recital and her quartet project "Pleasure is the Law", issued by Boston Records, and "Oboe Divas" on the Oboe Classics label. One of the most influential teachers in the USA, her students hold important positions in more than a dozen major orchestras and university faculties. In the summers, Ms. Douvas is an artist faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and she teaches three intensive, one-week oboe seminars: Le Domaine Forget Academy in Quebec, Interlochen (MI) Arts Camp, and the Hidden Valley Music Seminars in Carmel, California. She has given master classes at the Curtis and Cleveland Institutes of Music, the Manhattan and Eastman Schools of Music, the New World Symphony, and the Conservatories of Beijing and Shanghai. Her three albums of demonstration and written commentary for Music Minus One are used by teachers and students across the country. Originally from Port Huron, Michigan, Ms. Douvas trained at the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with John Mack, at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Her first job was principal oboe of the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Shaw. For many years she has devoted her spare time to figure skating and earned her Gold Medal for Adult "Moves in the Field" in 2006. Photo by John Abbott.