Zhou Long(周龙) won a Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2011. He is internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West. Deeply grounded in the entire spectrum of his Chinese heritage, including folk, philosophical, and spiritual ideals, he is a pioneer in transferring the idiomatic sounds and techniques of ancient Chinese musical traditions to modern Western instruments and ensembles. His creative vision has resulted in a new music that stretches Western instruments eastward and Chinese instruments westward, achieving an exciting and fertile common ground. Zhou Long was born into an artistic family and began piano lessons at an early age. During the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to a rural state farm, where the bleak landscape with roaring winds and ferocious wild fires made a profound and lasting impression. He resumed his musical training in 1973, studying composition, music theory, and conducting, as well as Chinese traditional music. In 1977, he enrolled in the first composition class at the reopened Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Following graduation in 1983, he was appointed composer-in-residence with the National Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra of China.

Zhou Long traveled to the United States in 1985 under a fellowship to attend Columbia University, where he studied with Chou Wen-Chung, Mario Davidovsky, and George Edwards, receiving a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1993. After over a decade as music director of Music from China in New York City, he received ASCAP's prestigious Adventurous Programming Award in 1999. He has received commissions from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, Chamber Music America, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Among the ensembles who have commissioned works from him, are the Bavarian Orchestra (Poems from Tang), the Tokyo Philharmonic (The Future of Fire), the New Music Consort (The Ineffable), the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (Soul and Tian Ling), the Peabody Trio (Spirit of Chimes), and the Kronos, Shanghai, Ciompi, and Chester string quartets (Poems from Tang). In February 2010, his pioneering cross-cultural opera, Madam White Snake, which Opera Boston premiered, received great critical acclaim. It was given a second performance in Beijing on 27 October 2010 by the Bejing Philharmonic Orchestra.