An overdose of cello

Other guest musicians include German cellist Julius Berger, a professor at the University of Augsburg; French cellist Marc Coppey, a professor from the Paris Conservatory, and Swiss cellist Wen-Sinn Yang, a professor at the Academy of Music and Theater in Munich.

Speaking about the event, cellist Martti Rousi, professor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, who attended the SuperCello event in 2017, says: "SuperCello is a cello festival with the feeling of a rock show. There is lots of support, knowledge and dedication from the audience. You must be there to understand it. I feel privileged to be coming back.

"I also feel the performers and audience together bring out the beauty, emotion and drama of the fantastic music. Without the audience we cannot do much."

The cellist will give a master class on April 29 and perform Ernest Bloch's Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hebraique for Violoncello and Orchestra on April 30.

The event will be wrapped up with a free concert on May 1 by the China Youth Philharmonic Orchestra and five cellists from France and Germany, including Jerome Pernoo, Raphael Pidoux and Marc Coppey, under the baton of conductor Shao En, with repertoires such as Franz Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata in A Minor and Camille Saint-Saens' Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No 1 in A Minor.

Chu says that many children who are learning cello attended the music festival last year with their parents, and the event is a great opportunity for them to meet professors from established music schools and interact with young cellists.

From 2004 to 2017, Chu worked as the head cello teacher at the Central Conservatory of Music. And among his successful students is Yang Yichen, a young Chinese cellist, whose band, Amber Quartet, won an international chamber music competition in 2013, making it one of the first Chinese quartets to do so.

Chu formed his cello ensemble in 2005, dedicating most of his time to chamber music. And he has toured the country with the ensemble, performing in places where the cello is rarely heard.

In 2015, he and his team visited locations along the ancient Silk Road and performed works by Bach, Debussy and Mahler. The venues included Qinghai Lake in Northwest China's Qinghai province. Separately, Chu and his team also played amid natural settings in nearby Gansu province, at venues such as the Yadan National Geological Park, which has landforms created by winds from the Gobi Desert.

In 2016, when SuperCello made its debut, Chu celebrated his 50th birthday with the audience and his musician friends. He says "it was a fabulous birthday".

"Every year, the audience and musicians surprise me. The excitement is indescribable," he says about the project.