Works performed by Earplay:

Birdsong

JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, often assimilating influences such as non-Western folk music, Tibetan chant, and Brazilian rhythms.

Fung has enjoyed numerous high-profile projects in recent years as her music continues to move in new directions. Her Violin Concerto No. 2 was commissioned and premiered in February 2015. Most recently, her Biennale Snapshots opened the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s 2015-16. The 25-minute work was commissioned by the Vancouver Biennale and inspired by five artworks from the Biennale exhibition.

Among Fung’s upcoming commissions are a new work for the newly founded Manhattan Chamber Players’ inaugural concert, a new work for the Daedalus Quartet and clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois, and a new orchestral work commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa.

Many distinguished artists and ensembles around the world have embraced Fung’s music as part of the core repertoire. Conductors with whom she has collaborated include Mei-Ann Chen, Bramwell Tovey, Gerard Schwarz, Peter Oundjian, Justin Brown, Edwin Outwater, Andrew Cyr, and Steven Schick. Fung’s Glimpses for prepared piano has been championed by a diverse group of pianists, including Margaret Leng Tan, Conor Hanick, Jenny Lin, and Bryan Wagorn. Fung’s orchestral and chamber works have also been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, Alabama Symphony, Shanghai Quartet, Ying Quartet, Chicago Sinfonietta, Suwon Chorale of South Korea, and American Opera Projects, to name a few.

In 2012, Naxos Canadian Classics released a recording of Fung's Violin Concerto No.1, Piano Concerto 'Dreamscapes', and Glimpses. The Violin Concerto earned Fung the 2013 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. Several other of Fung’s works have been released commercially on the Telarc, Çedille, Innova, and Signpost labels.

Fung traveled to Southwest China in 2012 for ethno-musicological research to study minority music and cultures in the Yunnan province, continuing research that previously inspired Yunnan Folk Songs (2011). As a composer whose travels often inspire her music, Fung has also explored diverse cultures in North Vietnam, Spain, and Indonesia. She toured Bali in 2010 and competed in the Bali Arts Festival as an ensemble member and composer in Gamelan Dharma Swara.

Fung has received numerous awards and grants, including a Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts' Gregory Millard Fellowship, ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, MAP Fund, Music Alive! and the League of American Orchestras, American Composers Forum, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre.

Born in Edmonton, Canada, Fung began her composition studies with composer Violet Archer and received her doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York, where her mentors included David Diamond and Robert Beaser. She was a faculty member at Juilliard from 2002 to 2010, and currently lives in California with her husband Charles Boudreau, their son Julian, and their Shiba Inu, Mulan.

Her website is vivianfung.ca.