The conductor Xia Fei-yun was born in the Tongxiang district of Zhejiang province of China and demonstrated at an early age considerable enthusiasm for music and painting. As a small child he made his own dizi and erhu and using a violin he had made himself was accepted as a student of the Shanghai Conservatory in 1953, studying the violin there with Wang Renyi, followed in 1956 by study of Western orchestral conducting under Yang Jiaren. At the same time he studied Chinese conducting with Wei Zhongle and Hu Dengjao, graduating in 1961, when he joined the teaching staff of the Conservatory. Xia Fei-yun has appeared widely in China and in Hong Kong as a guest conductor.
