Classical Chinese Music Society (尔雅社）

Classical Chinese Music Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural organization legally registered in California and based in Los Angeles. It is dedicated to the study, preservation, and development of classical Chinese culture.
Founded on the guqin tradition, the Society also embraces Kunqu opera, Peking opera, silk-and-bamboo music, tea, literature, calligraphy, painting, and related arts. Through gatherings, lectures, workshops, tea events, and performances, we create an open platform for learning and cultural exchange. All who are drawn to these traditions are welcome, regardless of nationality, background, or prior experience. We value different stages of learning, but not distinctions of superiority.
The name 尔雅 means drawing near to what is refined, upright, and beautiful. In this spirit, the Society seeks to make classical Chinese culture both accessible and profound, allowing people to enter its world gradually through sound, text, image, ritual, and shared practice.
Chinese culture is a living tradition: rooted in the past, responsive to the present, and renewed through cross-cultural encounter. Across the seas, we hope its ancient music and spirit may continue to resonate, inviting all who share this vision to take part.

Guqin Artist – Bin Ma

Bin Ma is a qin musician and practitioner of traditional Chinese arts. He is the founder of Classical Chinese Music Society, a board member of New York Chinese Opera Society, and a member of the China Theatre Association. Having lived in North America for over a decade, he has devoted himself to teaching the qin and transmitting the classical arts.
He specializes in the guqin, performs laosheng roles in both Peking opera and Kunqu, and is also versed in percussion, dizi, and sanxian. He also studies Chen-style taijiquan. His aspiration is to bring the ways of the ancients into the life of the present day.

Guqin Artist – Eluy Liu

With a background in fine arts and history of art, Eluy Liu has worked closely with numerous artists and galleries, and currently works in contemporary art advisory. Having spent many years immersed in contemporary art, he has returned to the study of Eastern classical traditions, receiving instruction in the guqin under the master Lui Pui-Yuen.
His research further engages classical Chinese philology, phonology, and exegetical studies, attending to the intricate relations between form, sound, and meaning encoded within Chinese characters. For Liu, this inquiry into language resonates with his practice of art: both offer ways of discerning the underlying structures, hidden correspondences, and deeper orders through which the world becomes perceptible.