MINCHAO CAI was chosen to attend the 21st Beijing International Music Festival in 2018, where he was instructed by conductor Paavo Jarvi. In the same year Cai became the assistant conductor of the China Youth Symphony Orchestra and helped with rehearsals for each of the Orchestra’s concerts and has been in this position until he attended Boston.
Cai was awarded “Best Conductor” at the China-Europe International Culture Arts Festival, and was a finalist of the Erno Lanyi International Conducting Competition.
Cai’s performances include the Tchaikovsky Symphony No.4 with the Taiwan Evergreen Symphony Orchestra in Evergreen Concert Hall, Taiwan in 2019, the Brahms Symphony No.2, “Dreaming of the Southern Shore”, “Pine of Roma,” “Vltava (The Moldau)”, and Chin-Cheng Lin’s Marimba Concerto no.1. He has also conducted several pieces composed by students with China Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Central Conservatory of Music.
Cai is currently studying at the New England Conservatory of Music to earn a master’s of music in conducting and studies with professor Charles Peltz. Cai’s teachers have included Professor Lin Chen, the director of the conducing department of Central Conservatory of Music, and Maurizio Ciampi, the vice principle of Santa Cecillia. His teachers also include Mark Gibson, the conductor of Cincinnati, and Luis Clemente, the Chief Conductor of the Atlantic Coast Orchestra.