Wang Xilin, Human Suffering, and Compositional Trends in Contemporary China by John O. Robison. Published by the MRI Press 2021 240 pages, ISBN 978-1-933459-10-3 $45.00 per copy plus shipping  Table of Contents Customers will be provided with the url and a password to access the musical examples a few days after purchase.

“I want to express the suffering of contemporary people, and the evil of their oppressors.” Once Wang Xilin made that statement to author John Robison during his first interview in Beijing on November 10, 2012, he knew that he would need to do something to make Wang and his music more well-known throughout the world. Described by one German music critic as one of the most original voices in China, his story is a compelling one that shows his own personal struggles, as an ordinary person of modest means, against oppressive ruling powers: Coming from a poor family background, Wang could not study the music that he wanted to due to government restrictions, was unjustly treated for fourteen years during the Cultural Revolution, and could not find his truly distinctive voice as a composer until he was more than half a century old, after the Chinese government allowed people to have exposure to the music of twentieth-century European composers such as Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, Penderecki, and others….While Wang’s ideas and his talent for evoking them through music certainly originated from his own experiences within mainland China, his concern for humanity has gradually evolved into empathy for all unfairly treated individuals throughout the world. With this universally appealing message, Wang Xilin deserves recognition as one of most dynamic and original voices in late twentieth and early twenty-first century music.

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