Dr. FAN Wei-Tsu, Dean of the College of Arts and Professor of the Chinese Music Department at Chinese Culture University, received his training at the Northwestern University with Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in musicology (Dissertation: Variant Performances of Franz Liszt’s Piano Music in Early Recordings: A Historical Perspective on Textual Alterations, 1991.) He is also the founder and Artistic Director of Research of Zheng Art and an executive board member of the Association of Chinese Music in Taiwan.

In April 2023, he was invited to be judge of World Guzheng Competition 2023.

An award winning performer and composer of Zheng, a Chinese zither, Dr. Fan have been playing extensively throughout Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan and North America, and was listed in the roster of the Arts Tour Program of the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts of USA. His major works include: Savor, Reverie, Chaos, Études-Tableaux on Taiwanese Folk Songs, Star Dust, Upon Her Expressive Gaze, Dark Angel, Concerto Dung Lijun, Visions Fugitives, Vision d'automne, Living Dangerously, Jazz Krakowiak for Zheng Trio, and Concerto Arabesque. An acclaimed soloist in the prominent Yangzhou Zheng Festival, the Beijing Zheng Festival, the First International Guzheng Symposium in Hong Kong. In recent years he frequently appeared in major festivals in Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Nanchang, Hangzhou, Chaozhou, as well as Macau, Penang, Kobe, Japan and Seoul, Korea.

A prolific scholar on music history and piano repertoire, Dr. FAN conducted an extensive research on international piano competitions, focusing on adjudicating systems and an accumulative analysis of the competition repertoires. Between 1996 and 2007, he had visited such major events as Tchaikovsky (Moscow), Chopin (Warsaw), Queen Elisabeth (Belgium), Van Cliburn (Fort Worth), Hamamatsu, among others. This research culminated in two books respectively entitled Gradus ad Parnassum: Music Competitions and Young Artist’s Career Building (Taipei, 2001) and International Sunset Colosseum for Aspiring Young Pianists (Taipei, 2007; winner of the “Music Criticism” category of the China Golden Bell Award, Beijing, 2013). His critically acclaimed books also include: Aspects of the Russian Pianism: A Critical Perspective (Beijing, 2005) and Moonlighting Liszt: Music Criticism at History Crossings (Taipei, 2005). Prof. Fan contributed regularly to music journals such as Music Times (Taipei), Piano Artistry (Beijing) and Qin Zheng (Xian).