Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement: Tan Dun

This year the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement goes to Tan Dun, a charismatic multitalented figure in the music of our time, and one of the composers most representative of the creativity born and bred in the orient that has so intensely engaged with and indeed bonded with the west. Tan Dun’s compositions, such as the three symphonic scores that he himself will conduct in their Italian premiere performances in the concert with the Orchestra Sinfonica della Rai, Concerto for Orchestra (from Marco Polo), The Tears of Nature and Secret of Wind and Birds, paradigmatically express his ideal of organic music in symbiosis with the environment (an ideal that originates in the chinese shamanic tradition), in which natural elements such as water, stones, paper and ceramic objects interact with the traditional instruments of the orchestra. A unique figure in contemporary music, Tan Dun is one of the few contemporary composers who has become a popular phenomenon, with over 15 million viewers on YouTube for his Internet Symphony.