Youdi WANG

Guqin teacher, performer and scholar · Visiting Scholar, Harvard University

About

Youdi WANG

Guqin teacher, performer and scholar · Visiting Scholar, Harvard University

Visiting Scholar, Cognitive Aesthetics Media Lab (CAMLab), Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. The first Ph.D. majoring in Guqin performance in China, graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in 2022. Assistant Professor of Guqin performance at the Xi'an Conservatory of Music; Supervisor of Master's degree at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

The only golden medal winner in the National Guqin Competition in 2009, the highest award for Guqin performance at that moment
The Wenhua Award winner (文華獎) for outstanding teaching in 2021, the highest award given by the Chinese Government for music education
The project founder and leader of the Guqin Art Week in the Greater Bay Area, funded by the China National Arts Fund in 2024
Guqin music performer in the dancing drama Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting, which was also shown at the China Spring Festival Gala in 2022

Music

Music

Teaching

Appointments

Harvard University — Visiting Scholar, FAS CAMLab　Feb. 2026 – now
Xi'an Conservatory of Music — Assistant Professor, Guqin performance　Apr. 2023 – now
The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts — Supervisor of Master's degree　Aug. 2025 – now

Online Teaching

WeChat Mini Program
Youdi Wang Guqin Classroom

Research

Publications

Youdi Wang — Master of Music Graduation Guqin Recital, live recording CD, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts; released by ROI Productions, cat. RS-161003-1C; raw recording, no post-production
Youdi Wang. Ancient Music Scores, Modern Rhymes — An Album of Guqin Music Notation by Wang Youdi, Shanxi People's Publishing House, ISBN 978-7-203-12460-3, 2023
Bing Wei, Youdi Wang. Advanced Digitization for Ancient Chinese Guqin Scores Based on Mask R-CNN Algorithm, IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo Workshop 2023, Brisbane, Australia, July 10th–14th, 2023
Youdi Wang. AI Shi Pu (AI釋譜) – the digital platform for Guqin Jian Zi Pu based on AI technology, The International Conference on Music Education Technology 2023, Hong Kong, January 10th–12th, 2023
Youdi Wang. Individual variability in versions of Chinese guqin music reconstructed through the dapu procedure, Music, Individuals and Contexts: Dialectical Interactions — Proceedings of the First Young Musicologists and Ethnomusicologists International Conference, Roma, Italy, ISBN 978-88-85780-07-1, 2019

Artificial Intelligence

AI Interpretation for Guqin Scores (AI 釋譜) · Candle · String Theory, Soaring Dragon

With Wei Bing, Youdi Wang co-directs AI Shi Pu — AI Interpretation for Guqin Scores (AI 釋譜), an AI-based platform for digitizing guqin tablature (jianzipu), developed with the Department of Music AI and Music Information Technology at the Central Conservatory of Music. Wei Bing leads the technology; she serves as Artistic Director for the guqin. The first task was to digitize the scores and build a dataset of historical guqin tablature from scratch. The project created the world's first AI-generated Guqin piece, Candle — every note generated by AI, then arranged and notated by Youdi Wang — premiered at her doctoral graduation concert on 24 December 2021 (Central Conservatory · Beijing Daily).

Carrying the dataset and the generative model one step further comes String Theory, Soaring Dragon — written for guqin, electronic music and AI. Composed by Liu Enyang; visuals, algorithms and interaction design by Wei Bing; guqin by Youdi Wang. The title comes from string theory in physics: elementary particles are one-dimensional "strings" whose vibration modes correspond to different particles — and the guqin is among the oldest stringed instruments of China, inscribed on the UNESCO intangible heritage list in 2003. Set against the traditional piece Soaring Dragon, the work trains a deep-learning model on the team's own dataset of traditional guqin repertoire to generate new guqin music, then combines it with electronic music and high-precision motion capture, so that a human performer, virtual instruments and AI-generated sound meet in one audiovisual space.

Candle　premiere　·　the world's first publicly performed AI-generated guqin composition

String Theory, Soaring Dragon　composed by Liu Enyang　·　visuals, algorithms and interaction design by Wei Bing　·　guqin by Youdi Wang

CCTV Age of Digital Intelligence　documentary

The Guqin Art Week in the Greater Bay Area

Funded by the China National Arts Fund (國家藝術基金) in 2024 · also funded as a cultural exchange project by the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, HKSAR

On 17 January 2025 the inaugural Guqin Art Week in the Greater Bay Area (大灣區古琴藝術週), funded by the China National Arts Fund in 2024, opened at the Huaqiang Culture and Arts Centre in Guangming District, Shenzhen. It was reported as the largest guqin cultural exchange event held in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area in recent years, combining online and on-site programmes: guqin concerts, art showcases, a new-works concert, academic forums, symposia and an art-and-technology exhibition.

Wu Wenguang, senior professor at the China Conservatory of Music and a towering figure in the guqin world, served as Honorary Chair; Zhao Jiazhen, professor and doctoral supervisor at the Central Conservatory of Music, served as Honorary Chair and Chair of the jury. Youdi Wang and Wei Bing, associate professor in the Department of Music AI and Music Information Technology at the Central Conservatory, are its co-founders; she serves as Executive Chair and Wei Bing as technical director.

At the opening she described the aim: to build an "Guqin Arts Plus" cultural calling card rooted in the Greater Bay Area, reaching the whole country and facing the world, and to establish a platform integrating industry, education, research, exhibition and outreach. Three themes shaped the first edition — masters gathered, players in dialogue, and new works assembled. "I am deeply grateful to the National Arts Fund and the Hong Kong SAR Government for their recognition, trust and funding, which allowed this project to grow from a seed and be carried through."

Role
Project founder and leader · Executive Chair
Funding
China National Arts Fund (國家藝術基金), 2024 — one of only five projects from Hong Kong funded by CNAF ｜ also funded as a cultural exchange project by the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, HKSAR
First edition
Opened 17 January 2025 · Huaqiang Culture and Arts Centre, Guangming District, Shenzhen
Honorary Chairs
Wu Wenguang (Senior Professor, China Conservatory of Music) ｜ Zhao Jiazhen (Professor and doctoral supervisor, Central Conservatory of Music; also Chair of the jury)
Organizing Committee
吴文光 ｜ 赵家珍 ｜ 王悠荻 ｜ 魏冰
Advisory Committee
俞峰 ｜ 管晓宏 ｜ 李小兵 ｜ 呼延梅文 ｜ 章华英 ｜ 张伯瑜 ｜ 肖京
Art Committee
排名不分先后
曾成伟 ｜ 谢俊仁（中国香港）｜ 王建民 ｜ 徐君跃 ｜ 张重雪（中国香港）｜ 陈明志（中国香港）｜ 姚晨 ｜ 李聪农 ｜ 林蔚丽 ｜ 吴叶 ｜ 戴茹 ｜ 魏圩 ｜ 张子盛 ｜ 姚亮 ｜ 谢东笑 ｜ 倪诗韵 ｜ 陆笑姿 ｜ 曾河 ｜ 顾永祥 ｜ 孙瀛 ｜ 倪羽朦 ｜ 李令晨 ｜ 陈子初 ｜ 吴旻聪（中国台湾）｜ 梁迪嘉（中国澳门）
Production Team
总策划 王悠荻、魏冰　｜　总导演 张自若（中国香港）　｜　执行总监 张超（中国香港）　｜　执行导演 胡青　｜　行政总监 刘庆庆

Works

Capriccio on the Town of Wei

Composed by Youdi Wang　2019　·　guqin and dizi

Composed by Youdi Wang in 2019, Capriccio on the Town of Wei takes its inspiration from Song of Weicheng by the Tang poet Wang Wei, also known as Seeing Yuan Er Off on a Mission to Anxi: "Morning rain in Weicheng dampens the light dust; the inn stands green, the willows freshly new. Let me urge on you one more cup of wine — west of Yang Pass there will be no old friends." Through the northwestern frontier landscape and a cup raised with an old friend, the poem carries a deep and unhurried grief at parting; its lines read like a painting, and it has remained famous for a thousand years. Later musicians drew on the same material for the guqin classic Three Variations on Yang Pass, whose threefold repetition returns again and again to the parting; since the Ming dynasty it has been preserved in many tablature collections.

Capriccio on the Town of Wei extends from that tradition. It opens with the clear, round timbre of the guqin against the distant, floating line of the dizi, drawing the scene: lone smoke over the desert, the sun setting on the long river, old friends drinking, reluctant to part. In the fast section guqin and dizi turn lively and quick, entering into dialogue — as though setting out west from Weicheng and passing through the customs and colours of the Western Regions. The ending returns to the long line of the opening, scene and feeling merged, the aftertaste unbroken.

Or as it may be put: a rhapsody from Weicheng, begun in the high Tang. Wang Wei then, his feeling turned one way. Cups raised together, the desert bare. Three variations chanted, Yang Pass the road home.

Award
Outstanding Work Award in the final round of the DunHuang Award Chinese Chamber Music Composition Competition, 2021

Discovering with Looking Back: the Qin

Wei Bing　2023　·　the only invited artwork to attend the 2023 Zhongguancun Digital Music Festival

A multimedia interactive installation. Working through audiovisual synaesthesia, it takes the viewer's movement as the object of interaction and answers with corresponding guqin sound, staging an abstract and unfixed dialogue between the work and the person in front of it — an invitation to think about art and technology, technology and the humanities, and where the boundary between human and artificial thought may lie.

Shown
The only invited artwork to attend the 2023 Zhongguancun Digital Music Festival
Shown
Exhibited at the 2024 Zhongguancun digital culture and technology entrepreneurship showcase
Credits
Wei Bing　·　guqin recorded by Youdi Wang

Interaction Between Qin and Human No.1

Wei Bing　2021–2023　·　guqin recorded by Youdi Wang

Using AI image-recognition algorithms, the work invites the audience into the act of turning jianzipu tablature into guqin music. A participant may follow the guidance or simply follow their own ear, trying, reading and trying again — and hearing how a different interaction yields a different piece.

Selected
The third Asia Digital Art Exhibition — one of 55 works chosen from several hundred worldwide; Beijing Times Art Museum
Toured
Invited to the exhibitions at the 2021 Guangzhou Cultural Industry Fair and the 2023 China International Fair for Trade in Services
Included in
the white book for AI + Arts, 2023
Credits
Wei Bing　·　guqin recorded by Youdi Wang

Contact

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