Jay Harvey mentioned four Chnese musicians who inspired others to follow them abroad. They are Yo-To Ma, Bright Sheng, L:an Lang, and Yundi Li.
Yo-Yo Ma led the way among mainland-connected Chinese musicians now making major, world spanning careers in classical music. Born in Paris in 1955, the cellist is the offspring of Chinese-born parents. His father (his first teacher) had left China 10 years earlier.
Composer Bright Sheng, 54, emigrated in 1982 and moved to the United States. He has had many commissions since taking up residence here, including the required piece in the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Local chamber-music lovers twice heard Sheng compositions in Ensemble Music Society concerts in 1992 and 1993.
Lang Lang, 27, first attracted attention in this country when as a teenager he replaced Andre Watts in a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert at the 1999 Ravinia Festival. He comes from a family of Chinese folk musicians, and his father sometimes joins him onstage, playing the erhu, a two-string bowed lute.
Yundi Li, 27, made his initial splash in 2000, when he won the Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw at the age of 18. He had started on the accordion in central China at age 4, but three years later switched to piano and began winning competitions. In his early teens, he started capturing prizes in the West, setting up his big break in the Polish capital.
Li is considered to represent the more restrained, elegant approach to classical piano, putting him in an obvious position to be compared with Lang Lang as his polar opposite. Li made his ISO debut in February 2008. (Source: Jay Harvey, Indystar.com, Jan 17, 2010).