About Cynthia Wong

A composer of what the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung calls "shamelessly beautiful" music for not only the avant-garde but “for all classical enthusiasts or indeed all music lovers," Cynthia Lee Wong is much in demand by ensembles around the world. Current commissions include a work for the Duo Slaato Reinecke, a piano sonata-fantasy for Soo Jin Anjou and a piano quartet for the Santa Fe Music Festival and the La Jolla Music Society, which will receive performances in 2010 and 2011.

Past commissions include String Quartet No. 1 for the Tanglewood Music Center in 2009, Songs of Gernika for Irantzu Agirre’s debut at Carnegie Hall in 2008, and Sinfonietta for the Cincinnati College-Conservatory Orchestra in 2008. On Baldness and Other Songs (2007) and Three Portraits (2005) were commissioned by Musica Viva and premiered by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2004, the New Juilliard Ensemble commissioned and premiered Stages in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. Fates and Furies received its premiere by the Juilliard Orchestra in 2003. In 2000, when Wong was 17, her Piano Concerto No. 2 was premiered by the New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Benjamin Zander and Wong as piano soloist, winning praise from The Boston Globe for the work’s “bright, glittering surfaces” and for showing “remarkable technical accomplishment” and “great rhythmic sophistication” as a composer.

Wong's solo, chamber, and vocal compositions have been performed in Spain, France, Canada, Russia, Bulgaria, Germany, and the United States. Her Fugato was recorded by pianist Lilia Boyadjieva and featured on her Around the Fugue/Autour de la fugue CD. Wong collaborated with choreographer Sebastian Gehrke in 2003 on Low, Livid, Lucid, which received performances in the Juilliard Theater and in Alice Tully Hall. In 1999, Wong performed her piano music at the Gnessen Institute in Moscow, the Moscow Conservatory, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.

Among her awards are the 2008 and 2001 ASCAP Awards; the 2008 Robert Starer Composition Award from the Graduate Center, CUNY; third prize at the 2005 International Zemlinksy Composition Competition; and the 2004 Joseph Bearns Prize from Columbia University.

Wong is a graduate of the accelerated five-year Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Music program at the Juilliard School. She studied composition with Milton Babbitt, David Del Tredici, Samuel Adler, David Olan, and Larry Thomas Bell, as well as piano with Frank Levy, Tatyana Dudochkin, and Martin Canin. From 2006 to 2008, she was on the music theory and composition faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Wong is a Ph.D. candidate and Enhanced Chancellor's Fellow at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. She teaches at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

Visit Cynthia Wong's website.

The 4.40 Fund

The 4.40 Fund is a commissioning collective that brings people together to support the creation of new work performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and around the world. By contributing just $4.40, you join a community of people of all ages, interests, and incomes, united by a curiosity for new music and the artists who create it.

Project 440 is supported by a leadership gift from Thomas Bishop, with additional major support provided by the Baisley Powell Elebash Fund. Project 440 is a collaboration between Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and WQXR.

Project 440 World Premiere
October 13, 2011 at 8 PM
Stern Auditorium | Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall

Cynthia Wong's Memoriam is the first of four new works by emerging composers commissioned by Orpheus as part of Project 440.

Dedication:
To my father and those whom we have lost to cancer,
In honor of their memories which shall always inspire us.
To caregivers and those who are left behind,
To commemorate their strength and endurance during difficult times.

Spotlight on Project 440 composer Cynthia Wong

Blog Update from Cynthia Wong

Cynthia Wong's composition process begins with improvisation. Watch the video above to learn more about her composition process, in addition to her many other talents.

Audio sample:Three Portraits
Performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Conducted by Paul Zukofsky

Cynthia Wong on Three Portraits:
I remember reading a poem about a person who, while dreaming, unlocked certain life truths, only to forget them upon waking. This moment, in which one is suspended in wonderment in the face of mysterious yet daunting absence, when one is armed only with the power of questioning and the knowledge of no longer knowing–this is the moment that opens the piece. It is from this sense of loss that all else springs: the restless uncertainty of the first movement; the meditative stillness of the second; and the muted madness of the third.

One can perceive the portraits of Three Portraits as belonging to the same individual, yet taken from different moments of that person's life. The perspectives that others have of the individual and that the individual has of the self clash at times clash, and at times they are inseparably combined.

Three Portraits is painted in dark and subtle colors, the orchestration more transparent than full, the proportions clearly defined, the interplay of lines both savage and delicate.