Future In REverse (FIRE) is dedicated to the future of music. Specializing in multi-media and cross-genre projects, ensemble FIRE is widely praised for its innovative programming and performances. Founded in 2005 by composer and conductor Huang Ruo, FIRE has performed at Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Rubin Museum of Arts, Austrian Cultural Forum NY, Issue Project Room, Aspen Summer Music Festival, and the Greenwich Music Festival. FIRE's diverse collaborations include visual music with kinetic painter Norman Perryman and ballets with choreographers James Sewell from the James Sewell Ballet and Charlotte Griffin from the New York Choreographic Institute. In 2008, FIRE recorded sound tracks for two films (Emperor's New Garden and Stand Up), which will be released in 2010. FIRE's upcoming recording TO THE FOUR CORNERS will be released Naxos Record in 2009. Comprised of both Eastern and Western instruments and some of today's most gifted and promising young musicians, FIRE advocates music in a wide variety of styles, ranging from avant-garde modernism to world music, visual arts, and experimental music. For more information about FIRE, please visit: www.myspace.com/futureinreverse

Recently awarded First Prize by the prestigious Luxembourg International Composition Prize, Huang Ruo has been cited by the New Yorker as “one of the most intriguing of the new crop of Asian-American composers.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese folk, Western avant-garde, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls "dimensionalism." Huang Ruo’s writing spans from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and modern dance, to sound installation, multi-media, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. Ensembles who have premiered and performed his music include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Asko Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, and Dutch Vocal Laboratory, and under conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, James Conlon, Dennis Russell Davies, Ed Spanjaard, Xian Zhang, and Ilan Volkov. Huang Ruo has received awards and grants from the ASCAP Foundation, Presser Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Argosy Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Meet The Composer, NYSCA, Chamber Music America, American Music Center, Aaron Copland Award, and Alice M. Ditson Award.

Huang Ruo has collaborated with New York City Ballet's principal dancer Damian Woetzel and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, in addition to kinetic painter Norman Perryman. In 2003, Miller Theatre featured Huang Ruo on its Composer Portraits series, where his four chamber concertos were premiered as a cycle with him conducting. New York Times critic Allan Kozinn listed this concert as the second on the list of his “Top Ten Classical Moments of 2003.” Huang Ruo’s Chamber Concerto Cycle was released on Naxos in February 2007; Leaving Sao, a work for orchestra and Chinese Folk Voice, was released on Albany Records with his own singing in 2008; and Divergence came out on Koch International in 2009. Huang Ruo’s film credits include soundtracks for Jian-Fu Garden and Stand Up. The latter was recently named the Official Selection for the Rhode Island International Film Festival and the Atlanta International Film Festival.

His music has been played in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Symphony Space (New York), the Academy of Music (Philadelphia), the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Harris Concerto Hall (Aspen), the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ and Paradiso (Amsterdam), the Shanghai Concert Hall, and the Hong Kong City Hall cultural complex. A frequent winner of the ASCAP Concert Music Award, Ruo’s work has been spotlighted on National Public Radio (NPR), Radio Finland, Radio Sweden, Radio-Amsterdam, Radio-Canada and Radio-China. Huang’s recent commissions include a cello concerto, People Mountain People Sea, for Jian Wang, co-commissioned by the ASCAP Foundation as part of Miller Theatre’s Pocket Concerto series; Real Loud, a chamber work co-commissioned by the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; and The Color Yellow, a concerto for sheng, written for Wu Wei and the Albany Symphony under David Alan Miller. Huang Ruo’s future concerts include with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at Hong Kong’s Culture Center Concert Hall, Shanghai Symphony at the Shanghai Grand Theater, as well as the American Composers Orchestra with him singing his own Leaving Sao at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in 2009.



His future commissions and premieres include an orchestra work for the Shanghai Spring International Music Festival with the Shanghai Symphony, the chamber concerto MO for the Luxembourg Sinfonietta (Luxembourg), an grand opera for the Opera Hong Kong, a chamber opera for the Dutch Vocal Laboratory (Netherlands), String quartet No.2 for the Carducci Quartet (Great Britain), and String Quartet No.3 for the Chiara Quartet (USA), chamber works for UMS ´N JIP (Switzerland), the Continuum Ensemble, Camerata Pacifica, the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, the Macau International Music Festical. Huang Ruo’s past film credits include sound tracks to the films Jian-Fu Garden as well as Stand Up. His works are published by the Huang Ruo Publishing and Recording Company, which he founded in 2000. Also noted as an author, he published Selection of Classic Chinese Folk Songs (Zhong Shan University Press). In 2006, the National Committee on United States–China Relations selected him as a Young Leader Fellow.

A frequent winner of the ASCAP Concert Music Award, Ruo’s work has been spotlighted on National Public Radio (NPR), Radio Finland, Radio Sweden, Radio-Amsterdam, Radio-Canada and Radio-China.

Aside from being an avant-garde composer, he is also a conductor and Chinese folk-rock singer, releasing commercial recordings on Naxos and Albany Records, and making debuts at Lincoln Center as well as Carnegie hall. Also noted as an author, Huang Ruo published Selection of Classic Chinese Folk Songs with the Zhong Shan University Press. His music is published by the Huang Ruo Publishing and Recording Company, which he founded in 2000. Huang Ruo has been an invited lecturer and forum presenter at New York University, Columbia University, Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and Guangzhou Conservatory of Music. He was also a visiting composer at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the University of Georgia.

Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China, in 1976, the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. His father, who is a well-known composer in China, began teaching him composition and piano when he was six years old. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was steadily opening its gates to the Western world, he received both traditional and Western education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He was admitted into its composition program, studying with Deng Erbo at the age of twelve. As a result of the dramatic cultural and economic changes in China following the Cultural Revolution, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. Huang Ruo was able to absorb all of these newly allowed Western influences without inhibiting factors. As a member of the new generation of Chinese composers, he clearly knows that his goal and task is not just to mix both Western and Eastern elements, but to go beyond that to create a seamless integration and a convincing organic unity, drawing influences from various genres and cultures. After winning the Henry Mancini Award at the 1995 International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland, he moved to the United States to further his education. Since then, he has earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in composition from the Juilliard School. His composition teachers have included Randolph Coleman and Samuel Adler. Huang Ruo is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase. He is the artistic director and conductor of Future In REverse (FIRE), and was selected as a Young Leader Fellow by the National Committee on United States–China Relations in 2006. For more information about Huang Ruo and his music, please visit: www.huangruo.com