International Federation for Choral Music

As part of the WSCM tradition, six WSCM 2026 invited choirs will be paired with six commissioned composers, culminating in world premieres at their gala concerts at the Macau Cultural Centre. Reflecting the symposium’s theme, each choir will perform a newly created work by a composer from a different country, creating a dynamic space for cultural exchange and musical dialogue.

Xia Yanbin is Associate Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Music and Dance, Zhuhai College of Science and Technology, where he teaches composition and conducting. He has received the China National Arts Fund five times and been selected as a Young Artistic Creation Talent and a Young Literary and Art Creation Grantee by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. Xia has given four solo concerts in Guangzhou and beyond, with scores published by People’s Music Publishing House and recordings by China Record Corporation. He led a workshop on Night and the Starry Sky in Chinese poetry at the 13th World Choir Games in Auckland. Commissions include Tsinghua University and conductors Tian Xiaobao, André van der Merwe, and Lim Ai Hooi. Xia is described as one who “navigates between tradition and modernity, balancing melodic elegance with a restless exploration of the contemporary Chinese choral idiom.”

Xia Yanbin’s note on Lu Zhai

Wang Wei’s twenty characters have waited 13 centuries to be heard again - not read but sung. This setting does not interpret the poem so much as inhabit it: the empty mountain, the unseen voice, the last light catching on moss. Chan aesthetics and choral sound share a quiet kinship; both ask the listener to attend to what is almost not there. To reimagine the future, we must first learn to hear silence. Wang Wei (699–761) was a Chinese musician, painter, poet, and politician.