Artist Ke Yi is Winner of LABA Icon Award for Lifetime Achievement
Ke Yi plays the violin
Artist Ke Yi is Winner of the LABA Icon Award for Lifetime Achievement. His distinguished career in music was followed by a crossover into art where he formed a unique creative style by “incorporating musical thinking into painting”.
I. Basic Information and Educational Background
Ke Yi, Han ethnicity, was born in Fushun, Sichuan Province in August 1953. He is a second-
level professor and a master’s supervisor. (He was once appointed as a doctoral supervisor for
interdisciplinary research between literature and music at Sichuan University.) He started working in 1970 as an educated youth. In 1982, he graduated from the Composition Department of Sichuan Conservatory of Music, majoring in composition. He was engaged in music composition and music education management for many years.
From 2010 to 2014, he served as the president of Sichuan Conservatory of Music. (In 2019, Shinhan University in South Korea awarded Ke Yi a Doctor of Education degree.) Even after retirement, he has remained active in the art field. Currently, he serves as the Honorary Dean of the Violin Art Research Institute of Sichuan Conservatory of Music and the Honorary Director of the Guqin Research Center of Sichuan Conservatory of Music.
Artist Ke Yi
II. Music Composition and Academic Contributions
Representative Works
Yi is renowned for his compositions that integrate traditional Chinese music with modern
techniques.
Award-winning Musical Works
Pipa Concerto: Man Jiang Hong
Flute and Orchestra: Epic of Ashima
Erhu and Pipa Orchestra: Reflections on Reading “Song of Everlasting Regret”
Chinese Orchestral Music: Rhapsody on the Dadu River
Hammered Dulcimer and Chinese Orchestral Music: Ode to the Goddess
All these works are included in The Collection of Chinese Music Works over the Past Century.
Academic Research. He has published several important papers, such as Analysis of the Current Situation of Online Music and A Brief Explanation of Schenker’s Concept of “Improvisation”, and has translated Schenker’s theoretical works.
Promotion of Discipline Construction
1. In 2010, he participated in the compilation and publication of the five-volume Selected
Works of Wang Guangqi (serving as the deputy editor-in-chief). This book won the first prize of
the Sichuan Provincial Social Science Award in 2011.
In 2011, he took the lead in establishing the Electronic Music Department of Sichuan
Conservatory of Music, filling the gap in the cultivation of high-level electronic music talents in
Western China. He also published the first set of domestic “Series of Theories and Techniques of
Electronic Music”.
Education and Management
Yi has long held teaching and administrative leadership positions at Sichuan Conservatory of
Music. He once served as the Deputy Director of the Expert Committee of Higher Art Education
of the Ministry of Education and the Vice President of the Chinese Polyphonic Music Society.
He participated in national-level teaching evaluations and review work, making important contributions to the development of the art education system in Sichuan Province.
Artist Ke Yi
III. Artistic Crossover and Oil Painting Creation
After retiring in 2014, Yi embarked on a career in oil painting creation, forming a unique
creative style by “incorporating musical thinking into painting”.
Creative Achievements
As of 2025, he has completed more than 2,200 oil painting works, including The European
Refugee Crisis, Returning Soul to Seda, Scenery of Beihai, Chasing the Wind, My Heart Will Go
On, and a series of works about musicians and artists. The themes cover portraits, natural
landscapes, and human history.
Artistic Concept
He advocates “the purity of art” and emphasizes that art should carry the depth of thought and
the thickness of emotion.
Crossover Integration
He integrates the thinking of harmony and polyphony in music composition techniques into the
composition and color of paintings, and has been praised as “composing silent music with shapes
and colors”, breaking the boundaries of art and traditional thinking.
Artist Ke Yi
IV. Honors and Social Influence
Personal Honors
He once served as a consultant to the Chinese Musicians Association in the United States, the
Vice President of the Musicians Association of Sichuan Province, and the Honorary Chairman of
the Musicians Association of Chengdu.
Social Evaluation
Art critic Huang Zongxian said that Yi’s oil paintings “carry the depth of emotion with shapes
and colors, and are more touching than works that show off techniques”. He is praised as “a dark horse in the art circle”, and his works show the “patriotic feelings” and social responsibility of intellectuals. In 2019, Shinhan University in South Korea established the “Ke Yi Hall” art gallery in the new teaching building for Ke Yi’s paintings.
Artist Ke Yi
V. Artistic Concept and Life Realm
Yi’s artistic career is characterized by “purity” and “crossover”: Resonance between Music and Painting. He believes that art is “a sincere expression of life experiences”, and creation requires “seeing oneself, seeing the world, and seeing all living beings”.
Collection and Inheritance
Over the past 50 years, he has collected more than 4,000 Chinese and foreign musical instruments, reflecting his respect for and inheritance of diverse cultures. Yi’s multiple identities as a composer, art educator, painter, and collector jointly construct the image of an “omnidirectional artist” who adheres to the essence of art in the process of the development of the times.
The Beverly Arts News is sponsored by Cynthia Clarté, MDSUN, Youben Hu Art Studio, En Guangzhi Art Studio, and The Beverly Arts Foundation