Zhou Long is internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West. Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for his first opera, Madame White Snake, Dr. Zhou also received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Elise Stoeger Prize from Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, and Barlow Prize. He has received commissioning awards from the Koussevitzky, Fromm Music foundations; Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Fellowships are from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Symphony Humen 1839 (commissioned and premiered by the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra) has been awarded the first prize at the 2009 China National Composition Competition for symphonic work.

Born on July 8, 1953, in Beijing. Zhou Long enrolled in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in1977. Following graduation in 1983, he was appointed composer-in-residence with the China Broadcasting Symphony. He travelled to the United States in 1985 under a fellowship to attend Columbia University, where he studied with Chou Wen-Chung, Davidovsky and Edwards, receiving a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1993. Dr. Zhou is currently Bonfils Distinguished Research Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory.

In recent years, he completed the symphony Grand Harmony, jointly commissioned by 16 orchestras led by the China National Symphony Orchestra (premiered at the Beijing Concert Hall on September 20, 2025); Nine Odes, a concerto for erhu and orchestra, co-commissioned by the Beijing International Music Festival Art Foundation, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra (premiered in Beijing and Shanghai in October 2024); a symphonic oratorio: Men of Iron and the Golden Spike for voices, choir and orchestra (c. 50 minutes) co-commissioned by the Stanford University and Bard College, premiered at the Carnegie Hall in 2019; a concerto for orchestra, Classic of Mountains and Seas, commissioned and premiered by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra which received an award from the China National Arts Fund for subsequent performances; Tipsy Poet for violoncello and orchestra, co-commissioned and premiered by the WDR Symphony in Cologne and at 2019 Dresden Music Festival, and later by the Seattle Symphony and Singapore Symphony in 2023; piano concerto (co-composed with Chen Yi) Brilliant Prospect was premiered by Shenzhen Symphony in 2022; Tsingtao Overture, commissioned and premiered by Qingdao Symphony which received an award from the China National Arts Fund for subsequent performances; symphonic suite Beijing Rhyme commissioned and premiered by the Beijing Symphony Orchestra; a mixed quartet Legend of Nine Bells co-commissioned by the Wigmore Hall and Lincoln Center; and his first piano concerto Postures co-commissioned by the BBC Proms and Singapore Symphony. In 2013, Zhou Long has composed a whole evening symphonic epic Nine Odes on poems by Qu Yuan for four solo vocalists and orchestra, commissioned by the Beijing Music Festival and premiered by Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. An adaptation of the work for erhu and orchestra co-commissioned by the BMF, Shanghai Symphony and Guangzhou Symphony will be premiered in 2024. Zhou’s music of all genres has been widely performed and recorded, and published by the Oxford University Press, Presser-Carl Fischer and the Shanghai Music Publishing House.