Biography
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Born
17 January 1982 (age 42)
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Born In
San Francisco, California, United States
Composer and pianist Anthony Cheung (b. 1982, San Francisco) has a body of work that ranges from solo to orchestral works. His music reveals an interest in the ambiguity of sound sources and the subtle transformation and manipulation of timbre allied with harmony. Representations of space and place are common themes, achieved through innovations in spatialization and orchestration, as well as actual source material via field recordings. Musical artifacts, both imaginary and allusive, become sites of fragmentation or excavation. The music also frequently engages poetic imagery, syntax and rhetoric, natural phenomena, and is heavily influenced by improvisatory traditions.
Anthony Cheung has been commissioned by leading groups such as the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cleveland Orchestra (as the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). His work “Lyra” was commissioned for the New York Philharmonic at the request of Henri Dutilleux, as part of the orchestra’s inaugural Kravis Prize for New Music. In addition, his music has been performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (MusicNOW series), Minnesota Orchestra, Ensemble Linea, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, wild Up, Musiques Nouvelles, Atlas Ensemble, Orchestra of the League of Composers, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Orchestre National de Lille, eighth blackbird, Dal Niente, the New York Youth Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. More recently, he has written new works for the Escher and Spektral Quartets, violinist Jennifer Koh, flutist Claire Chase, oboist Ernest Rombout, and pianists Gilles Vonsattel, Shai Wosner, and Joel Fan.
The recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, he has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Fellowship and Scholarship) and ASCAP, and first prize in the Sixth International Dutilleux Competition (2008), as well as a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome (2012). He has also received commissions from the Koussevitzky and Fromm foundations.
Cheung’s music has been programmed at international festivals such as Ultraschall (Berlin), Cresc. Biennale (Frankfurt), Présences (Paris), impuls (Graz), Wittener Tage, Tanglewood, Aspen, Mostly Mozart, Transit (Leuven), Heidelberger Frühling, Helsinki Festival and Musica Nova Helsinki, Centre Acanthes, Musica (Strasbourg), and Nuova Consonanza (Rome).
Three portrait discs have recently appeared: Cycles and Arrows, with the Spektral Quartet, ICE, Atlas Ensemble, and soloists (New Focus, 2018), Dystemporal, with the Talea Ensemble and Ensemble Intercontemporain (Wergo, 2016), and Roundabouts, with the Ensemble Modern and Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (Ensemble Modern Medien 2014). His music and performances have also appeared on New Focus Recordings, Tzadik, and Mode. His music is published by EAM/Schott (PSNY edition), Editions Alphonse Leduc, and in self-published editions (ASCAP).
As a performer and advocate for new music, he co-directed the Talea Ensemble from its founding in 2007 until 2017, performing as a pianist and serving as Artistic Director. With Talea, he performed extensively in the US and abroad as a specialist of new music, and helped to curate programs, conferences, and festivals. As a pianist, he has worked with leading composers such as Pierre Boulez, Stefano Gervasoni, Tristan Murail, Hans Abrahamsen, Iancu Dumitrescu, Julian Anderson, Steve Lehman, Steve Coleman, and Chou Wen-Chung.
As a writer and scholar, he has completed a dissertation on György Ligeti (on the Hamburg Concerto, 2010), as well as articles on contemporary music for both specialists and a general readership. Research interests include notational aesthetics, jazz improvisation and transcription, musical semiotics and topoi, and microtonality and alternate tunings. These are also subjects that continue to have a decisive influence on his creative work.
Anthony Cheung received a BA in Music and History from Harvard and a doctorate from Columbia University, where he taught and also served as assistant conductor of the Columbia University Orchestra. His primary composition studies were with Tristan Murail and Bernard Rands, and he has studied additionally at the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, Domaine Forget, Fontainebleau, and Centre Acanthes, working with many leading composers. His primary piano studies were with Robert Levin and Paul Hersh. From 2009 to 2012, he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Chicago.
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