Shaofan Qi - comet ISON

Biography

Shaofan Qi 

"Qi Shaofan began his self-education and practice in music at 14, when he got his first piano at 8th grade. After 6 month piano study, he moved to Beijing and began a new life there for next 8 years. Although his piano study was stopped, he continued his piano playing and composing along his high school. And at that time, he gradually established a favor of large orchestra sounds. He began to self-study the music history and theories with a group of classical-music-lovers.


In his study at Beijing Institute of Technology, he began to try different kind of composing with at least 100 pieces, including concertos, solo piano pieces, chamber works, orchestral works, and arrangements of other works. He began to get his own kind of style, which much more influenced by the Russian composers such as Prokofiev and Kabalevsky. And Traditional Chinese tunes can also be found in his works. In February of 2010, he was commissioned by the Classical Music Group of Renmin University of China to write a piece of music, which is a Capriccio for Piano. 

Currently Shaofan is a graduate student in University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Comet ISON

(by the composer himself)

My piece is mainly describing the sky especially the Short-lived ISON comet.