Raised in a family with a limited musical background, Lu showed great interest in music where he started teaching himself violin and composition since middle school.[iii] Lu was then admitted to the Guangxi Academy of Art in 1977, where he received his bachelor degree while majoring in music composition. Lu later went to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to continue his study in music composition, and eventually received his master’s degree and became a faculty member at the conservatory for many years.[iv] In 1991, Lu began a new adventure to the U.S. for a better family health outcome and career development.[v] He studied and worked at the University and Louisville (received a Master Degree in Composition),[vi] and later admitted to the Doctoral of Musical Arts (DMA) program at the University of Michigan. Lu received his doctoral degree in 2002 with straight As, and taught at the university for a year.[vii] He later accepted the offer and rejoined the faculty at the University of Louisville from 2003 to 2006.[viii] Lu went back to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and rejoined the Composition Department as a profession in 2006.

Lu won numerous major international composition prizes during his student and composer period. His Symphony No. 3 has him Silver Prize of ’97 Composition Competition in Beijing, and his work for Impression of Silk and Bamboo has won the first prize of the Sixth International Composition Competition of New Your City in 1997.[x] Lu has been commissioned by numerous world-class symphonies such as the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, etc.[xi] Lu Pei’s Selected Work on Violin [陆培小提琴作品选] was published in 2016, which collected his most performed violin pieces since 1999,[xii] including the award wining composition Four Fantasies for Solo Violin on the Themes of Chinese Folk Tune [为独奏小提琴而作的四首中国主题幻想曲] and Man Jiang Hong: Legend of an Ancient Hero [满江红—一个古代英雄的传奇], which he composed while as a student at the University of Michigan.