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For our November book club, we’ll be reading Beethoven in China in the lead-up to our chat with the authors, Jindong Cai and Sheila Melvin.

At the turn of the twentieth century, students returning from abroad brought Beethoven to China. The composer’s perseverance in the face of adversity and his musical genius resonated in a young nation searching for a way forward. Beethoven remained a durable part of Chinese life in the decades that followed, proving a remarkable chameleon; an icon to reformers, intellectuals, music fans and party cadres alike, playing a role in major historical events from the May Fourth Movement to the normalization of US-China relations.

SPEAKERS:

Jindong Cai

A conductor, author, and educator with a distinguished career, Jindong Cai is the director of the US-China Music Institute, co-director of the Chinese Music Development Initiative, and professor of music and arts at Bard College. Prior to joining Bard, he was a professor of performance at Stanford University. Over the 30 years of his career in the United States, Cai has established himself as an active and dynamic conductor, scholar of Western classical music in China, and leading advocate of music from across Asia. He has conducted most of the top orchestras in China, as well as orchestras across North America, and has written extensively on music and the performing arts in China. Together with his wife Sheila Melvin, Cai has coauthored Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese as well as Beethoven in China: How the Great Composer Became an Icon in the People’s Republic.

Sheila Melvin