Aaron Avshalomov was a Russian-born Jewish composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

.

Born into a Mountain Jew

Mountain Jews

Highland Jews, Mountain Jews or Kavkazi Jews also known as Juvuro or Juhuro, are Jews of the eastern Caucasus, mainly of Azerbaijan and Dagestan. They are also known as Caucasus Jews, Caucasian Jews, or less commonly East Caucasian Jews, because the majority of these Jews settled the eastern part...

ish family, he was sent for medical studies to Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

. After the October Revolution, in 1917, which made further studies in Europe impossible, his family sent him to the United States. There he married a fellow Russian émigré in San Francisco.

Less than a year later, he chose to return to China, where he entered the world of Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

's academia and, together with other highly qualified Jewish musicians (i.e., Alfred Wittenberg, Walter Joachim, Arrigo Foa, etc.), who had fled the Russian pogroms

Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire

The term pogrom as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated antisemitic rioting saw its first use in the 19th century.The first pogrom is often considered to be the 1821 Odessa pogroms after the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were killed...

 and revolution, trained a number of young Chinese musicians in classical music, who in turn became leading musicians in contemporary China. Between 1918 and 1947, he worked to create a synthesis of Chinese musical elements and Western techniques of orchestral composition. In 1919, his son, Jacob Avshalomov

Jacob Avshalomov

Jacob Avshalomov is a Jewish American composer and conductor.-Early life and education:Jacob Avshalomov was born on March 28, 1919 in Tsingtao, China. His father was Aaron Avshalomov, the Siberian-born composer known for "oriental musical materials cast in western forms and media"; his mother was...

 was born, who became a composer and conductor, too.

In 1947, he moved to the USA, where he already had spent three years in the mid-1920s.

Compositions:

• Kuan Yin (opera named after Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion; premiered in Peking in 1925)
• The Twilight Hour of Yan Kuei Fei (opera, 1933), presumably after the 1923 eponymous book by A. E. Grantham.
• The Great Wall (opera, 1933–41)
• Dream of Wei Lin (1949)
• Piano Concerto in G on Chinese Themes and Rhythms
• Flute Concerto
• Violin Concerto
• Symphony No. 1
• Symphony No. 2 (1949, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky
  Serge Koussevitzky
  Serge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...
  
  )
• Soul of the Ch'in
• Hutungs of Peking
• Four Biblical Tableaux (Queen Esther's Prayer, Rebecca by the Well, Ruth and Naomi, Processional)