bio sola

In her compositions, Liu Sola shows an affinity towards Free Jazz and Blues with Chinese roots. She is also singer with an unforgettable voice, as well as being a celebrated author. She completed her studies at the renowned music conservatory in Peking in 1983 shortly after the Cultural Revolution. Sola’s first novel You Have No Choice lent a voice to the post-cultural-revolution-generation and became the cult book of the younger generation. Surprisingly enough, it received the Chinese National Novel Award in 1988. Sola went to New York in the 1990s and became intensely involved in Blues and Free Jazz. Her first US album Blues in the East stayed in the top ten of the world music charts for several weeks. In 2000 she returned to China, where she founded the New Folk Big Band, the first Chinese big band to play a fusion of Folk and Jazz. Now, she is mainly interested in classical Chinese music, which she interprets in her own inimitable way.