“[He] left a relatively small body of compositions, but his fastidious and elegant works are filled with emotional eddies. He wrote mostly for Western instruments, but made them bend single notes to accommodate the microtonal flexibility of Chinese music.” In addition, as a professor at Columbia University, he trained an entire group of now-prominent Chinese composers, among them Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, and Bright Sheng. – The New York Times