Zhao Lin

Son of the composer Zhao Jiping, trained at the Central Conservatory, and working since across film, stage and concert music. His generation of Chinese composers no longer has to argue that combining Chinese and Western material is possible; the previous one settled that.

The double concerto for cello and sheng, Crossing (度), is his most widely performed work, premiered in New York in 2013 by Yo-Yo Ma and Wu Tong, drawing on an imagined sound-world of Dunhuang and the Silk Road. His orchestral writing is clean, and the Chinese instruments carry structural weight rather than colour — the clearest difference between him and the generation before.