The Orchestral Instruments Department of China Conservatory of Music was set up in 2005. It has 15 majors including five teaching and researching classes of String Music, Woodwind Instruments, Brass Instruments, Percussion Instruments, Chamber Music and one practice orchestra named China Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. It has two cultivating gradations of undergraduates and graduates. In 2012, the Orchestra Academy of Orchestral Instruments Department of China Conservatory of Music was set up and it started to take M.M applicants.

Orchestral Instruments Department has 16 full-time teachers including 1 Professor, 2 Associate Professors and 5 external foreign Professors. At present, the Director of the department is Hou Junxia. Current teachers in the Orchestral Instruments Department are graduates of world top art schools, serving as leading roles in various renowned orchestras, which formed a reasonable team of teaching and researching.

As for course construction, it explores dynamic cultivating platform and has courses including Chamber Music, Ensemble, Orchestral Practice, Orchestral Accompaniment, Sight-reading of New Works and Performance of Chinese Works, which popularized orchestral music, Chinese chamber music works, performance and researches. In 2009, Orchestral Instruments Department was awarded the prize of Beijing Innovation Team, and the book named Orchestral Instruments of Chinese Higher Art Institute – Chinese Works of Chamber Music was awarded to be the high-quality textbook for Beijing higher education.

The Orchestra of the department had been invited to many countries and regions like the USA, Austria, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Spain, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil, Korea and Hong Kong to join in exchange activities. In July 2010, the orchestra attended the Salzburg Music Festival invited by Austria government, and became the first Chinese orchestra held a Chinese Works Concert in Salzburg Music Festival in the past 90 years. In 2012, it was invited to hold the Chinese Chamber Music Concert in Carnegie Hall in the USA, which received excellent reviews and aroused enthusiastic responses in the music industry and the local community.

At present, it had cultivated more than 500 undergraduates and almost 100 graduates. Most graduates played important roles in many troupes home and abroad.