Sun 8.14 Xuan Zang

CHIAYU (b. 1975)

Composer Chiayu’s career has been burgeoning with a remarkable number of commissions. In 2006, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra premiered Chiayu’s Hard Roads in Shu in its prestigious Conductors/Composers Workshop. It later received performances by the Detroit Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Toledo Symphony. In April 2010, her Shan Ko was selected by the EarShot program and read by the Nashville Symphony under the baton of Maestro Giancarlo Guerrero. In 2008, her Feng Nian Ji was given its world premiere at Cabrillo conducted by Marin Alsop. The same year, her Reverie and Pursuit received its premiere performance, commissioned and performed by Carol Jantsch, the tuba principal from the Philadelphia Orchestra and the recording was later released in 2009. In 2007, her Fantasy on Wang Bao Chuan, commissioned by Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony orchestra, was selected for the American Composers Orchestra’s annual Underwood New Music reading. Later, she was invited to collaborate with choreographer Keith Thompson from the danceTactics, for whom she composed Pellucid Tensions. She has also received numerous awards and honors. Shui Diao Ge To, composed for the 2004 Milestones Festival, received a 2005 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award. She has also received first prize in the Prism Quartet Student Commission Award, the Renée B. Fisher Foundation Composer Award, music+culture 2009 International Competition for Composers, and the 2010 Sorel Organization recording grant, to name a few. Chiayu received her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music, Master’s degree and Artist Diploma from Yale University, and Ph.D. from Duke University. Her teachers have included Jennifer Higdon, David Loeb, Roberto Sierra, Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, Anthony Kelley, Scott Lindroth, and Stephen Jaffe. The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the ensemble eighth blackbird, and the Prism Quartet have all premiered her music. Recent projects include a string quartet for Ciompi Quartet, a cello and piano piece for the Staunton Music Festival, a chamber work for the Curtis Institute of Music, and a horn concerto for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which will be given its world premiere on August 14 at Mission San Juan Bautista featuring Cabrillo’s principal horn, Kristin Jurkscheit, as soloist.

www.chiayu.com