Yue Qi

Yue Qi is playing the Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall on Friday 26 February 2027, from 13:05 to 13:55. He's an award-winning violist, and the concert is free.

Qi has built his repertoire around a particular crossing: he weaves traditional Chinese music together with Western classical viola works. It's a bit of a rarity to see those two worlds sharing the same stage, and that's exactly what he does. He's performed across China, Europe, the US and Asia, and has collaborated as a soloist with the China Broadcast-Film Symphony Orchestra, the Qingdao Symphony Orchestra and the Kunming Nie Er Symphony Orchestra.

There's a record to get your head around before you go, too. His album First Meeting got a lot of attention, and The Strad described his playing as having 'acute tonal sensitivity and vivid imagination'. In 2023 he gave a solo recital at the 48th International Viola Congress, where he performed the world premiere of Torch Festival by Professor Yuankai Bao. These two things—the album and the premiere—give you a good sense of where he's coming from: a mix of recorded work and new music being brought to the stage for the first time.

Beyond the performing, he's also teaching. He's currently Professor and Executive Dean of the Institute of Chinese Classical Music at the School of Arts, Renmin University of China. So when he steps out at the Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, he's bringing that academic side of the music with him. The hall is at the University of Leeds School of Music on Cavendish Road, LS2 9JT. The concert runs from 13:05 to 13:55 on Friday 26 February, and it's free.