Vivian Fung
composer

Vivian Fung (b. 1975) began her professional composition career at age nineteen, when she received her first commission from Gerard Schwarz and the New York Chamber Symphony. A New York Times review of the resulting work described Vivian as "prodigiously gifted... a composer to watch."

Since then, Vivian has built up an impressive body of compositions commissioned and performed by such ensembles as the Seattle Symphony, San José Chamber Orchestra, members of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Vancouver New Music, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, New England Philharmonic, American String Quartet, Avalon String Quartet, Music From China, and American Opera Projects, to name a few.

Vivian has also been composer-in-residence of the Music in the Loft chamber music series in Chicago, the San José Chamber Orchestra, Music Teachers' Association of California, the Billings Symphony, and most recently at the New York Summer Music Festival in upstate NY; she has also completed residencies at the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Banff arts colonies as well as two residences at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, one held in Florida and the other in Tuscany, Italy.

She has received numerous awards and grants from ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, American Composers' Forum, Meet the Composer, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Vivian's music was recently described by the San José Mercury News as "enchanting... Her music... summons images of dusk and reaches for hidden places and states of mind."

Vivian was born in Edmonton, Canada, in 1975 and began her composition studies with Canadian composer Violet Archer. Other early influences on Vivian's music included her mentors David Diamond, Narcis Bonet, and Robert Beaser, all of whom gave her a strong sense of craft and discipline.

Since earning her doctorate from The Juilliard School in 2002, Vivian has increasingly embraced non-Classical influences, including jazz and non-Western sources such as folksongs from the minority regions of China and Indonesian gamelan music. Vivian traveled to Bali, Indonesia for two months in the summer of 2004 as part of the Asia Pacific Performance Exchange Program, sponsored by the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance. In Bali, she studied gamelan and collaborated with distinguished Asian and American artists.

Her music has also been showcased in Asia: Vivian's String Quartet, for example, which was premiered by the Avalon String Quartet in January 2004 at the Columbus Chamber Music Society in Ohio, was performed by the American String Quartet in Beijing during the summer of 2004 as part of that quartet's residency with the Great Wall International Music Academy and Festival.

Vivian is on the Literature and Materials of Music faculty at The Juilliard School and organizes the music series World Music at Juilliard. She is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre.

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