General Admission: $20 | Senior & Student Admission: $15

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In celebration of AAPI Heritage Month, MOCA continues its commitment as a vital platform for timely and resonant live arts, uplifting Asian American artists working across time-based disciplines, including music, theater, dance, and film.

The Museum of Chinese in America is proud to partner with Composers Now to present Dialogues, a special program exploring the voices and visions of contemporary composers. Hosted by Composers Now Founder and Artistic Director Tania León, this town hall–style conversation brings together Chinese and Chinese American composers Jing Zhou, Weiyang Ding, and Sophia Kunxu Dou.

Together, they will reflect on their musical journeys, artistic challenges, and creative achievements, offering insight into their evolving practices. Designed as an open and dynamic exchange, Dialogue invites meaningful and thought-provoking conversation among composers, performers, and audiences alike.

The evening will begin with a performance by the featured artists, setting the stage for a rich and engaging dialogue.

PROGRAM

Jing Zhou: Chilly, for solo zheng

Weiyang Ding: Five Mini Dramas of Human Observation, Movements IV and V, for string quartet

Sophia Kunxu Dou: The Applicant, for soprano and cello

ABOUT Composers Now

Composers Now empowers all living composers, celebrates the diversity of their voices and honors the significance of their artistic contributions to the cultural fabric of society.

Founder and artistic director Tania León leads the organization since 2010. Composers Now features a broad spectrum of performances in concert halls, jazz mobiles, opera stages, experimental spaces, conservatories, museums and other musical venues. Symphony Space served as an incubator for the development of the Composers Now Festival. The Fund for the City of New York invited Composers Now to become a project partner in 2013. Composers Now became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in May 2019. To learn more, please visit: https://www.composersnow.org/  

ABOUT Tania Léon

Cuban-born American composer, conductor, and educator Tania León is one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of her generation. She was the first Latin American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2021. In 2022, she was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime artistic achievements. In 2023, she received the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition from Northwestern University and became the first woman to be honored with the highest composition prize conferred by Spain, the XIX Premio SGAE for Iberian American Music Tomás Luis de Victoria. In 2024, she earned the Distinguished Artist Award from the International Society for the Performing Arts. And in 2025, she was the recipient of the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Award, the Trustees Award. She was also recognized by Carnegie Corporation of New York as part of their 2025 Class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans. In addition, Columbia University selected her as the 2025 recipient of the prestigious William Schuman Award.‍

As a composer, León has been commissioned by leading orchestras around the world, held Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for its 2023-2024 season, and served as Composer-in-Residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for its 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 seasons. As a conductor, she studied under Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa, and has guest-conducted the New York Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester, Santa Cecilia Orchestra, and many more. As an educator, she has guest-lectured and served as Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Yale University, Chicago University, Musikschule in Hamburg, and others, and has received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from Brooklyn College, Colgate University, Columbia University, The Curtis Institute of Music, Dominican University, The Juilliard School, Oberlin, New Jersey City University, and SUNY Purchase College. León has served as an advisor to the New York Philharmonic and American Composers Orchestra, and in 2010 she founded Composers Now with the mission of empowering living composers.

ABOUT Composers

JING ZHOU

Jing Zhou is a composer and guzheng performer. She fuses new and bold musical ideas with her traditional Chinese musical heritage to create a distinct compositional style. She recently finished her DMA in composition at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, where she studied with Zhou Long, James Mobberley and Chen Yi. Previously, Zhou completed her Master’s in Composition at the New England Conservatory of Music and her Bachelor’s in Composition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

As both a composer and performer, Jing Zhou is a fixture at events around the world. Zhou fuses bold musical ideas with her traditional Chinese musical heritage to create a distinct compositional style. As a zheng performer, she has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Le Poisson Rouge, Symphony Space,National Garden Museum and the Kauffman Center.

Zhou’s pieces have been performed by a variety of ensembles, including Music from China, Dinosaur Annex,12:19 Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, Formosa Trio, Shanxi Symphony Orchestra and the New England Conservatory Philharmonia, in venues across America, Europe and China. Her works was spotlighted in the New York Women Composers collaboration with The Flute Examiner and the Cello Museum in New York. The Four Gentlemen Among Flowers for clarinet and zheng was included in the album East meets West, Vol II by Albany Records. http://jingzhoucomposer.com/

WEIYANG DING

Weiyang Ding is a New York–based composer and multidisciplinary artist fascinated by everyday absurdities. Her music explores the balance between comedy-driven playfulness and the beauty of seriousness, as well as the physicality of performers, through a range of mediums including acoustic instruments, electronics, and theater. She holds a Master’s degree in Composition from the Mannes School of Music and a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, and is currently pursuing a post-master’s diploma at Mannes.

Her recent projects include Too Many Dudes, a mixed-disciplinary collaboration featuring motion-sensor technology; Stuttering Comedian, an orchestral work exploring stuttering; Five Mini Dramas of Human Observation, a string quartet in which four players perform on a single cello; and an upcoming chamber opera about two traumatized women who bond through healing but move on at different speeds. www.wei2yangmusic.com. Social Media: @wei2yang_weiyang (instagram); Weiyang Ding or https://on.soundcloud.com/Um8kG8wmqa6F7CMUCy

SOPHIA KUNXU DOU

Sophia Kunxu Dou (b. Dec. 2007) is currently studying composition under Valerie Coleman at Juilliard and studied with Daniel Felsenfeld at Juilliard Pre-College. She is a winner of 2023 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, The American Prize in Composition–Orchestra 2024 and The 2025 First Commission Awards, a two-time finalist of National Young Composers Challenge and The American Prize in Composition–Chamber, and a three-time recipient of Luna Composition Lab honorable mention. She has been a member of the New York Youth Symphony since 2022. She was selected for Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Yellow Barn and Dolphins Quartet Young Artists Composition Programs, and was appointed a From the Top Fellow.

Sophia’s works have been performed at Kennedy Center, National Sawdust, Composers Now Festival, An Evening with Tania León, 14th Busan Maru International Music Festival and Sounds of US Festival. She has collaborated with Little Orchestra Society under Grammy Award-winning conductor, New York Youth Symphony, Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra, BUTI Young Artists Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Harlem Chamber Players, Aizuri Quartet, Dolphins Quartet, Avec String Quartet and Parhelion Trio.

Sophia has received awards in piano, violin, voice, poetry and Mathematics. She is also a visual artist whose work has been honored by Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and international competitions. She aspires to challenge artistic expressions through interdisciplinary collaborations where music, dance, visual arts, and theatre collide.

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sophiadoucomposer/
YouTube www.youtube.com/@SophiaDou-0608
Soundcloud https://on.soundcloud.com/QeGLjFAXSmd6ZcWVgf
Website https://composersophiadou.squarespace.com/