Li Xiangting

Chinese guqin player, born in Liaoyuan, Jilin, in 1940, and one of the most authoritative living voices on the seven-stringed zither. The guqin is the contemplative instrument of the Chinese literati, played for three thousand years less as performance than as self-cultivation and as a way of tuning oneself to nature, and its aesthetics are steeped in Daoist thought without belonging to Daoist liturgy. He taught for decades in the traditional music department of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and was a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge. In 2009 the Ministry of Culture named him a representative inheritor of the guqin as national intangible cultural heritage. He chairs the China Guqin Research Association and is honorary president of the China Qin Association, and is known above all for his improvisation, a practice the tradition had almost lost.