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Tran Quang Hai was born on 13 May 1944 in Vietnam. He is a talented and well-known musician. He comes from a family of five generations of musicians. He studied at the National Conservatory of Music in Saigon before coming to France in 1961 where he studied the theory and practice of Oriental music with his father, Prof.Dr. Trân Van Khê at the Center of Studies for Oriental Music in Paris. For several years, he also attended seminars on ethnomusicology at the School of High Studies for Social Sciences (he got the MA and Ph.D degrees), and acoustics with Prof. Emile Leipp.
He plays 15 or so musical instruments from Vietnam, China, India, Iran, Indonesia and Europe.Since 1966, he has given over 2,500 concerts in 50 countries, and has taken part in a hundred or so international traditional music festivals. He has taken part in radio and television broadcasts in Europe, America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
He has been working for the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France since 1968, and is now attached to the Department of Ethnomusicology of the Musée de l’Homme (Paris). He was a lecturer on South East Asian music at the University of Paris X – Nanterre (1988-1995)
Apart from his artistic activities, he is also interested in musical research. He has improved the technique of spoon playing and of the Jew’s harp. In 1970 he found the key to the technique of overtone singing. The film “Le Chant des Harmoniques ” (The Song of Harmonics) which he co-produced with Hugo Zemp, and in which he was the principal actor and composer of the film music, has won four awards at international scientific film festivals in Estonia (1990), France (1990), and Canada (1991). He is considered as the greatest specialist in overtone singing in the world.
He has written numerous articles on Vietnamese and Asian music (New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Algemeine Muziekencyclopedie, Encyclopaedia Universalis). He has also recorded 15 LPs and 2 CDs (one of which obtained the Grand Prix de l’Academie de Disque Charles Cros in 1983). He has composed hundreds of popular songs. His musical experience is very varied : contemporary music, electro-acoustical music, improvisation, film music. He continues to preserve and develop traditional Vietnamese music (numerous new compositions for the 16 stringed zither dàn tranh ).
