As a recording artist, violinist Donna Fairbanks has released several published CDs with the labels Albany Records, MSR Classics, 4TAY Records, and Tantara Records. Her recording list includes notoriously difficult works such as Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion and Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, as well as classic masterpieces such as Camille Saint-Saëns’ Fantasie for violin and harp. Reviewers praise her “great precision” (Fanfare), “delicacy and fire” (Grammophone), and her performances as “very convincing and pristine” (ConcertoNet), with “plenty of melodic beauty” (Atlanta Audio Club). Her recordings have been featured on major public radio stations, among them WNYC New York City, WFMT Chicago, WPRB Princeton, and the Beethoven Satellite Network.

Her international recitals include performances in China, Brazil, Mexico, and Europe. Notable venues include the Gent Festival in Belgium, Schumann Festival in Germany, Rotterdam Conservatory, Hungarian National Gallery, Teatro Ouro Verde in Brazil, and the Nanjing, Shanxi, and Huazhong Universities in China. She has completed faculty residencies at Universidade Estadual de Londrina in Brazil and the YouHao Art Center in Beijing, China.

Dr. Fairbanks received the 2021 Utah-ASTA Teacher of the Year Award in recognition of her contributions to teaching. Her students have excelled in competitions, job placements, and graduate programs.

She received degrees from the University of Arizona (DMA), the Eastman School of Music (MM), and Brigham Young University (BM), with additional studies at the University of Missouri Kansas City and the University of Cincinnati. Major mentors include Zvi Zeitlin, Varujan Kojian, Tiberius Klausner, and William Haroutonian.

Xiao Yayu is a member of the Chinese Musicians Association. He is a Chinese National First-Class Composer, Chairman of the Hunan Culture and Art Foundation, Adjunct Professor of the Central South University, and Adjunct Professor of the Hunan Normal University School of Music. In 2005, the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing House published a collection of Xiao’s original songs, including "Walking towards the Sun - Anthology of Songs Created by Xiao Yayu" I and II, which were released nationwide. In 2016, he composed the concertos "Liuyang River" and "Tianshan Xiangnu", which won the "Best Composition Award" and the "Best Original Ecological Work Award" in the International Golden Erhu Competition of the Central Conservatory of Music respectively. The large-scale symphonic children's musical, "Snow Fairy", created in 2022, will receive its world premiere at the Changsha Concert Hall. Xiao’s original representative works include art songs "Adjacent Is Fate", "Declaration of Life", "Into Spring", "This Moment", "Little White Dove", and "Sing for You".

Art and folk-song creator Li Xiaojun was born in February 1975. He is also known by his penname, Fengbieyun-Baiyunlou. He is a member of the Chinese Musicians Association, a member of the Chinese Music Literature Society, and a member of the China Music Copyright Association. He serves as the Vice Chairman of the 8th Changsha Federation of Literary and Art Association, Deputy Director of Changsha’s Culture, Tourism, Radio, Film and Television Bureau. He has created more than 200 lyric works and more than 40 of his songs have been launched on platforms such as QQ Music.

His representative songs include: Watching the Han River, which was rated as an excellent national anti-epidemic song by the Central Propaganda Department and the China Music Association; June is not a farewell, which won the first prize of the National Song Award for "My Youth and My Dream" by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, and was chosen as the theme song for the 2017 college entrance examination graduation season; Changsha South, which won the third prize of the National Song of China Railway Corporation's "Clarion of Revival"; Let Love Connect in the Sun, which won the 14th Hunan Province "Five Ones" Project Award, and was shortlisted for the “Singing the Hunan Golden Song I Loved for 70 Years" Award, as well as chosen as a winner of the Internet Popularity Award; Love by the Pavilion at Night, which was shortlisted for the "Hear China Hear You" Chinese contemporary song creation project by the Chinese Musicians Association, won the silver awards of the 4th "Xiaoxiang Good Song" from the Hunan Federation of Literary, Art Circles and Provincial Music Association, and was used as musical interlude for the 40-episode TV series "Penglai"; You in the Rain, which won the Silver Award for the "Happy Xiaoxiang" Exhibition of the Propaganda Department of the Provincial Party Committee, the "2018 Changsha Most Energetic Song Award" by the Provincial Radio Station, and the "Five Ones" Project Award of Changsha City; Our Changsha was shortlisted for the top three candidates in the "Changsha City Image Song" solicitation organized by the Propaganda Department of the Changsha Municipal Party Committee; Family Style was broadcast on CCTV and won the 2018 Hunan Provincial Musicians Association "Xiaoxiang Good Song" Bronze Award, as well as the Changsha "Five Ones" Project Award; Dream City, which won the Changsha "Five Ones" Project Award; Guarding the Liberation West, which was chosen as the ending song of the police reality show "Guarding the Liberation West"; Time is like a sand slip, which served as the theme song of the 2018 college entrance examination on the official Weibo of the Communist Youth League Central Committee; and Changsha Song, which was shortlisted as the representative song for Changsha for the 2021 national "One Song, One City" theme.

Jin-Xiang Yu, is a soprano with roots from China, Japan, Korea, and Russia. She grew up in a family of musicians and painters, speaking Japanese and Mandarin Chinese and learning English and Spanish at international schools. In her early years, she was an avid athlete, dancer, trumpet player, and pianist before moving to New York City, where she discovered her love for the voice through her studies in linguistics and communication. After over a decade of studying, performing, and teaching languages and musical arts in New York City, she has recently decided to call Cottonwood Heights, Utah, her new home. In March, she will perform the opera monodrama Chhlong Tonle (Crossing the River) with the support of the Opera America IDEA Grant. Some of her other recent works include recording Daniel Sabzghabaei's Quiet Thoughts at Night with BIPOC Voices, choreographing Matilda: The Musical at the Cottonwood Heights community theatre, and starring in commercials. 

She and her partner Bill founded the Music Under The Willow summer concert series at The Creative Little Garden New York City in 2016, and they are excited to be more involved in bringing music, arts, and experience to the local communities new to them. As a linguist, Jin-Xiang has been inspired to express her love of language through song. In April, she will be singing in Anthony R. Green’s The Gettysburg Address with NOVA Chamber Music Series with hopes that this timely piece can help invigorate our sense of purpose as a united people.

Following her appearance as Elle in Poulenc’s La voix humaine, she was praised by the New York Classical Review as a “robust soprano with secure amber tone…[with a] beautiful sense of phrasing and formidable French diction” and by Parterre as “a startling departure as Elle...remarkable for its conviction, guts, and endurance,” and The New York Times hailed her “compelling performance that traced the shifting moods vividly.” In Jack Perla’s An American Dream at Opera Maine, the Portland Press Herald praised “her bright, clear timbre and admirable vocal flexibility to create a moving portrayal of Setsuko.”

In recent years, she has been a guest soloist with the Yonkers Philharmonic under Maestra Tong Chen and has performed with Yale Philharmonia in Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi under Maestro Peter Oundjian. Recently, she sang O Holy Night at St. Patrick's Cathedral's A City Singing at Christmas and was a part of NAXOS's Songs of Peace and Praise. She sang the role of Papagena (Der Zauberflöte) with Yale Opera, was the soprano soloist with the Yale Concert Band in the performance of 岁月甘泉 / Ask the Sky and the Earth, and took part in the Mile-Long Opera by David Lang produced on the High Line in New York City and in Mother of Us All with the Juilliard School and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Previous roles include: Kaede in the world premiere of Mumyo and Aizen (Lincoln Center), Steve Reich's Tehillim with Face the Music and Alarm Will Sound (le Poisson Rouge), Domina in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (Kupferberg Center), Bloody Mary in South Pacific (Kupferberg Center), Constance in Dialogues des Carmélites (Kupferberg Center), Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi (Sprague Hall), and Titania in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shubert Theatre). She has performed in scenes as Zdenka in Arabella, Magda in La Rondine, the title role in Roméo et Juliette, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, and Bystrouška in Janáček’s Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen). As a 2015 Bonfils-Stanton Apprentice Artist at Central City Opera, she sung the role of Annina in La Traviata and la Japonaise in Boismortier’s Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse and covered Aldonza in Man of La Mancha.

She holds a degree in theatre dance from The American Musical and Dramatic Academy, a Bachelor of Arts in linguistics and a Bachelor of Music in vocal performance from CUNY Queens College, and a Master of Music in Opera from Yale School of Music. She is a recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts Award and the William Orr Dingwall Korean Ancestry Grant. She has been a semi-finalist of the Young Concert Artist Competition, a finalist in the Kaleidoscope Instrumental and Vocal Competition, and the first-place winner of the Lyra NY International Vocal Competition in Art Song.

Notes on Water Girl Mountain Boy

Most of the creation of ancient Chinese music comes from the author's connection to nature, focusing on absorbing from nature and becoming one with nature, creating the unity of mind and matter. In his symphonic poem "Shuimeishange", Water Girl Mountain Boy, Chinese National first-class composer Xiao Yayu, using landscape as the form and love as the soul, tries to remind us to respect, love and protect nature, as well as to follow the development of Taoism to live in harmony with nature. "Shuimeishange" expresses the strong emotion of the love for mountains and rivers, the loveliness of the human nature and the human spirit in mountains and rivers, and the simplicity and sincerity of artistic emotions. It aims to integrate the various elements of the nature of landscapes and the changes in the society of our times into music. It is a work that reflects the natural and human heritage of our era. 

Lyrics for Moon in a Foreign Land

How many roads I have traveled, thousands of rivers and mountains,
How many people I have met, complex and simple,
How many stories I have heard, reunion and separation,
The biggest wish is to go home and to reunite.
 
These unstoppable footsteps have traveled far,
And the forgotten past has been recalled several times,
In the deepest night, I am used to insomnia, and living well is a beautiful lie
 
The moon in a foreign land shines in front of the window,
The attachment to home is hidden in my heart,
The moon in a foreign land is so close and so far away,
It is overcast, cloudy, sunny, and full,
It tells the joys and sorrows of the world
 
The moon in a foreign land illuminates me,
The face of the people I care about warm my heart,
The moon in a foreign land,
The longing that I can't hide,
The wanderer in the distance want to return to my parents,
The sky in the distance has my most affectionate wishes