Timing is everything. Launched by Mao Zedong in 1969, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was no time for a Chinese child to embrace Western music. Luckily for Xuefei Yang, she stepped onto the world’s stage in Beijing in 1977, the year after Mao succumbed to a heart attack at 82. So, the coast was clear for a life-long romance with the classical guitar. At age 10, as the first guitarist ever admitted to a Chinese conservatory, Yang gave a debut recital that won her the gift of a concert guitar from the Spanish ambassador. At 14, she concertized in Madrid before Joaquín Rodrigo, composer of the Concierto de Aranjuez, that cornerstone of the symphonic guitar repertoire. In 2016, BBC Music Magazine ranked her among the Top Six Guitarists of the Century, in an otherwise all-male cohort including Andrés Segovia (1893–1987), her early benefactor John Williams (born 1941), Julian Bream (1933–2020), the Australian Craig Odgen (born 1967), and Miloš Karadaglić (born 1983). The playlist for Yang’s 15-city American tour—unfolding mostly in churches and community auditoriums—is crafted to reach listeners where they are and then perhaps expand their horizons. The hits include the electric Asturias of Isaac Albéniz, Erik Satie’s meditative Gnossienne No. 3 as well as his bouncy music-hall ditty La diva de l’Empire, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s moody Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Astor Piazzola’s jagged fugue La Muerte del ángel, Jerome Kern’s wistful “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” Billy Strayhorn’s ubiquitous jazz standard “Take the A-Train,” and more. For calendar details, follow the link provided. —Matthew Gurewitsch

Xuefei Yang makes 15 stops on her tour throughout the U.S. Visit her Web site for exact dates and places of the tour: http://www.xuefeiyang.com/events.html