Lu Liu 刘璐
Liu Lu (Lulu) is a pipa performer, researcher and educator.
She started to learn the instrument at age of six.
Her pipa teachers including: Zhang Junying 张俊英, Yumei 于梅, Zhang Shicheng 张世澄, Liu Huanzhang 刘焕章, Hou Guizhi候桂枝, Liu Gang 刘刚 and Zhang Qiang 张强 respectively.
She completed her undergraduate studies at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and recently passed her doctorate from the University of Sydney in 2019 for a thesis entitled: “The Chinese pipa and its music, from conservatory to concert hall and beyond: Case studies of pedagogues, popularisers and promoters”. In her study she investigate the recent transformation of the Chinese pipa solo tradition, particularly since 1949, as it moved from the folk tradition to the conservatory.
Lulu has performed extensively in Australia, China, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Career highlights include performing for an audience of 7000 at the “World Peace” Outdoor Festival in South Korea, and featuring on the long-running BBC Radio Program “On the Wire”.
In 2014, the composer and violinist Esmeralda Tintner had the idea of arranging the ‘Tea’ dance from Tchaikovksy’s Nutcracker for pipa accompanied by violins and percussion. Lulu was invited to premier this arrangement and the production was a success with performance seasons in the Sydney Opera House that year, and was followed by performances at music festivals in Victoria in 2015, New South Wales in 2016, and a Sydney Opera House season in 2017.
She has released two solo albums, three collaborative albums and also performed on the soundtrack to the movie “Mao’s Last Dancer”. As a researcher, her article “Contemporary Chinese Pipa Music and its Future” was published in the Journal of the Council for Asian Musicology in 2012, and she has a book chapter on the canonization of the pipa repertoire forthcoming in a volume on music and place in East Asia to be published with Routledge. She is currently employed as a pipa lecturer and senior advisor on China music strategy at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (SCM); she teaches pipa and ruan with the SCM Chinese Music Ensemble, and also teaches pipa as a principal study to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the SCM.
Lulu recently has honoured as guest professor with the Guangzhou Xinghai Conservatory of Muisc in China.
Australian Pipa Association Inc. 