Abstract: The subject of the study is the mutual influence of the compositional ideas of the Chinese-American composer Zhou Wenzhong and the French-American composer Edgar Varese. Edgar Varese, known as a composer and innovator who had a significant influence on the concepts of the post-war avant-garde, was also a brilliant teacher. One of his students was Zhou Wenzhong. Subsequently, Zhou Wenzhong became the editor of Warez's works, his biographer, an indispensable assistant and keeper of the archive. The article presents the facts of Zhou Wenzhong's biography, special attention is paid to the study of the composer's period of study with Varez, the trajectory of his influence, and the pedagogical principles that he adhered to in his teaching. Zhou Wenzhong needed to assimilate the innovations of Varese, form his own compositional style, based on the cultural traditions of China, forming points of intersection with the ideas and concepts of the avant-garde in cross-cultural interaction. The work has an interdisciplinary character, mediated by a key trajectory – the problem of the interaction of musical cultures of the East and the West. The author relies on source-based, analytical, comparative, historical and theoretical methods. Zhou Wenzhong (1923-2019) is one of the most influential and major American-Chinese composers. Despite the importance of this person, his work is still unexplored in Russian musicology, and therefore, filling this gap in the history of the development of new compositional trends in Chinese music, which marked the beginning of the phenomenon of the "New Wave" (after 1978), seems extremely relevant and important. The scientific novelty of the study is associated with the introduction into scientific use of information about the American period of Zhou Wenzhong's work – the time of his studies with Edgar Varese.