John Thompson is the best known performer of early music for the Chinese silk string zither, the music instrument most favored by Chinese philosophers and aesthetes (in Chinese: qin ["chin"] or guqin ["goo-chin"]). After a college degree in Western musicology (early music) and graduate studies in ethnomusicology, he began in 1974 to study China's silk-string guqin zither as played at present. Since 1976 he has focused on early repertoire, personally reconstructing over 150 melodies published in 15th and 16th century handbooks. In 1992 the National Union of Chinese Musicians invited him to Beijing as the focus of a seminar on reconstructing music from the earliest surviving qin handbook, Shen Qi Mi Pu (1425 CE). While based in Hong Kong as artistic consultant to the Festival of Asian Arts he performed throughout East Asia, and published seven CDs of his musical reconstructions as well as four books of music transcription. Since moving to New York in 2001 he has continued to perform, research and lecture on the qin. His website, www.silkqin.com, is the most comprehensive source of information on the qin.

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