About Ray
Born in China and educated at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Rui Shi Zhuo is a composer and a former conductor of the Shanghai National Orchestra. He came to Canada on a Graduate Studies Fellowship to study composition with Dr. Stephen Chatman and Dr. Keith Hamel at the University of British Columbia and received his Master’s degree in music composition in 1995. After graduated from UBC, He is a Music Adjudicator of Vancouver Kiwanis Music Festival for 2004-2007season. Also he was a composition/conducting professor working in Prairie Bible Institute during 2003-2005.
Zhuo has conducted more than 30 orchestral concerts in Canada, Europe and China, including those of the Pazardjik Symphony Orchestra, the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra, the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vancouver New Music Ensemble, the Vancouver Oratorio Society, the University of British Columbia Contemporary Players, the Far East Broadcasting Orchestra and Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble. In 1999, the West Bohemian Orchestra voted him the most popular conductor and second place award winner at the Eighth International Conducting Workshop in the Czech Republic. He conducted the Shanghai National Orchestra in the production of four CDs for Polygram Records in Hong Kong, Sunrise Records in Taiwan and Guanzhou Records in China. After he came Canada, he also published 3 CDs.
Specially, CMC selects Mr. Zhuo as the Composer Portraits-Influences of Many Musics which project focuses on Canadian composers who came from other countries highlighting their valuable contribution to Canadian music on Sept. 26, 2006. This year, Mr. Zhuo has some new achievement: The New Issued Film, Dragon Boys, Applied Ray’s music/song. His work String Quartet with Er-hu QI, Sheng Xin had been nominated as an Outstanding Classical Composition by Western Canadian Music Awards 2005. His new Symphonic Poem Oh! Yangtze River, commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO), was world premiered on April 19, 2004. VSO re-performed his piece Dao Ban for Pi-pa and Chamber Ensemble on June 2006.
Canadian music magazine OPUS ranked his newly issued CD Rui Shi Zhuo’s Compositions with 5 STARS for both Performance and Recording as well as excellent review in 2004. The Canadian newspaper The PROVINCE also ranked the CD with 4 STARS over 5. Also LEO AWARD nominated his animation film music Chinese Violin (produced by National Film Board of Canada) as the Excellence in the Category of Musical Score on May 9th. 2003.
Ray has accepted respective appointment as Conductor for B.C. Chinese Orchestra and Grand Ensemble Chorus starting from this year’s music season to promote the local musical activities.
