On the evening of January 12, 2024, the "Fudge Tianchang - New Year Concert of Zhao Cong and the Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory" was grandly staged at the National Center for the Performing Arts. Zhao Cong firmly believes that Chinese folk music can be spread internationally, "music knows no borders, and music can transcend any language!"
According to public information, Zhao Cong, born in 1976 and graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in 2000, is one of the top ten young pipa players in China, and was the deputy head of the Central Chinese Orchestra. She is an expert with special government allowance from the State Council, a "cultural master" and "four batches" of talents and outstanding discipline leaders of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee, and a member of the Ethnic and Religious Committee of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Zhao Cong enjoys a high reputation in the international classical music scene, and has won the "First Prize" of the National Youth Professional Pipa Competition for many times, and his representative works include "Pipa New Language", "Listening to China", "Classic Eternity", "Spring River Flower Moonlight Night" and so on. She has visited more than 50 countries and regions, and has made outstanding contributions to the globalization of Chinese music, and is known as a "music diplomat", and was awarded the "Overseas Promotion Individual Contribution Award" by the former Ministry of Culture.
On February 3, 2021, the Personnel Department of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced the appointment of the new leadership of the Central Chinese Orchestra, and Zhao Cong served as the head of the Central Chinese Orchestra. At the age of 45, she became the youngest female "head" of the group since its establishment.
Founded in 1960, the Central Chinese Orchestra is one of the most representative and complete national Chinese orchestras in China. It is composed of a large national orchestra and a national choir, and is known for singing Chinese folk songs and vocal works adapted from folk songs from various regions.
In August 2022, under the promotion of Zhao Cong, the Central Chinese Orchestra started a new attempt: hundreds of artists collectively settled in Douyin live broadcast.
At present, more than 100 live broadcast rooms of the Central Chinese Orchestra have formed a huge national music community based on the Douyin platform. Under its leading role, dozens of art troupes, including the Northern Performing Arts Group, Hunan Song and Dance Theater, and Inner Mongolia Art Theater, have successively joined Douyin's live broadcast plan.
During the National "Two Sessions" in March 2023, Zhao Cong, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and head of the Central Chinese Orchestra, spoke out for folk music at the panel discussion of the literary and artistic sectors of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference: "'Please come in' should be equal to 'going out', and 'building a platform' should be carried out simultaneously with 'leveraging the platform'", "'Catching forward' is a way and method to chase the frontier and break through innovation, and it is also an attitude and concept to embrace the times." ”