Helen Rees is a specialist in Chinese music, which she studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music as a British Council scholar (1987–1989). She has conducted extensive field and archival research on ritual music, music and tourism, and musicians’ lives in southwest China and Shanghai. Her other interests include the effect on East Asian traditional musics of contemporary intangible cultural heritage policies and intellectual property law; transmission and performance of Asian musics overseas; and organology (the study of musical instruments). Recent publications include the award-winning co-directed documentary film Playing the Flute in Shanghai: The Musical Life of Dai Shuhong (Pan Records, 2021), the CD Songs of the Naxi of Southwest China—He Jinhua (Smithsonian Folkways, 2022), and the edited volume Instrumental Lives: Musical Instruments, Material Culture, and Social Networks in East and Southeast Asia (University of Illinois Press, 2024). Her applied work has included acting as interpreter, translator and presenter for Chinese musicians at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Amsterdam China Festival, and other overseas venues, and consulting for archives and museum exhibitions in Europe and Asia. She is also active as a performer of recorder and Chinese flutes.

Music of China; ritual music; biography; organology; intangible cultural heritage policy and practice in East Asia; transmission and performance of Asian musics overseas.

Ph.D. Music, University of Pittsburgh; B.A. Chinese, Oxford University, England; diplomas in flute teaching (Royal College of Music, London), baroque flute performance (Trinity College, London), and recorder teaching and performance (Trinity College, London).