About

Press Kit

Biography

JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a unique talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. NPR calls her “one of today’s most eclectic composers,” and The Philadelphia Inquirer praises her “stunningly original compositional voice.” 

Fung continues to grow her reputation for artistic ingenuity, with recent collaborations expanding how we experience her music. Her powerful song cycle Lamenting Earth, co-commissioned by the Kaufmann Center and premiered by Nicholas Phan, Jasper String Quartet, and Myra Huang, centers around poet Claire Wahmanholm’s prize-winning poem “O,” and reflects the fragile state of the earth’s environment. Ominous, commissioned and premiered by the Grossman Ensemble, portrays her experience with her mom’s recent diagnosis with dementia punctuations, pitch bends, and murmurings across the 13-member work. 

Summer 2024 brought Fung’s works to a number of summer festival stages, including the West Coast premiere of Parade at the Cabrillo Festival, Prayer at Colorado Music Festival, Earworms performed by Interlochen World Youth Symphony Orchestra, American String Quartet performing Pizzicato at a number of chamber music festivals, and the Concordia University Symphony Orchestra Chamber Nucleus performing Birdsong on their 2024 Europe Tour.

2024/2025 season collaborations include the continuation and creation of Fung’s first opera, My Family // Cambodia, 1975, in collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek. Through a Canada Council grant supporting research travel, Fung and Vavrek visited Cambodia in the Fall of 2023, and will continue to workshop the opera with the Canadian Opera Company in February 2025. Fung will continue to collaborate with Vavrek on an additional song cycle for Andrea Núñez, as part of a residency at National Sawdust in Spring 2025. She is also working with the Del Sol Quartet on upcoming project Songs of the Diaspora, which will premiere June 2025 and bring to life a new string quartet work based on the poetry of San Francisco-based Jenny Lim. In another large-scale collaboration, Fung will travel with violinist Nancy Zhou to Guizhou, China, to begin research for a new work for violin and electronics.

The full 2024/2025 season begins with 10th Wave performing Billy Collins Suite, to Steven Schick including The Ice is Talking on a recital at the Univeristy of Iowa. Pacific Symphony Orchestra and Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra will perform Prayer, and Kamloops Symphony, Newfoundland Symphony, and the CODA All-State Orchestra perform Pizzicato throughout their seasons. Violin Concerto No. 1 receives multiple performances by violin soloist Nancy Zhou at the La Jolla Symphony Orchestra on LJSO’s “Luminosity: Colorists Past and Present” Concert. On a chamber music front, Jasper String Quartet brings her String Quartet No. 2 on tour, and Prayer for violin and piano will receive a world premiere by Lara St. John at Soundstreams. Early 2025 brings performances of Earworms to the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian premiere of Trumpet Concerto with Vancouver Island Symphony and trumpet soloist Mark D’Angelo, and a performance of Lamenting Earth with Nicholas Phan and ROCO. Gemma New will conduct Baroque Melting with the Winterthur Music College Orchestra, and Earworms will see a premiere with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. 

The past year has seen the release of numerous albums featuring Fung’s works, most notably “Trumpet Concerto” on the Cedille Records album Storyteller: Contemporary Concertos for Trumpet, performed by Mary Elizabeth Bowden and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Insects & Machines: Quartets of Vivian Fung, a portrait album featuring Fung’s first four string quartets performed by the Jasper String Quartet. Other releases throughout the season include “The Ice is Talking,” featured on Steven Schick’s second album of Weather Systems, Soundlines: On Language and the Land (Islandia Music Records), an album featured in the New York Times’ Best Classical Music Albums of 2023, “String Quartet No. 5: Spiraling” on the Lafayette String Quartet’s album Four Voices (Centrediscs), “Prayer” on the Carr-Petrova Duo’s album HERS (EmpowHER Records).

Fung has received numerous awards and grants, including a 2025 Juno Nomination for “Classical Composition of the Year” for her String Quartet No. 4;  a  2013 JUNO Award for “Classical Composition of the Year” for her Violin Concerto No. 1; the 2015 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award for achievement in new music from the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN); a Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Gregory Millard Fellowship; and grants from NewMusicUSA, ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, MAP Fund, American Symphony Orchestra League, American Composers Forum, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre and served on the board of the American Composers Forum. 

Many distinguished artists and ensembles around the world have embraced Fung’s music as part of their core repertoire, including the Chicago Sinfonietta, Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Montreal Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra (Canada), Detroit Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, San José Chamber Orchestra, American String Quartet, Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, Metropolis Ensemble, Civitas Ensemble, and Jasper Quartet, to name a few. Fung’s Glimpses for prepared piano has been championed by a diverse group of pianists, including Han Chen, Conor Hanick, Jenny Lin, Sarah Cahill, Margaret Leng Tan, and Bryan Wagorn. Conductors with whom she has collaborated include Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Alexander Shelley, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Rebecca Tong, Peter Oundjian, Cristian Măcelaru, Mei-Ann Chen, James Gaffigan, Long Yu, Andrew Cyr, Rei Hotoda, Barbara Day Turner, Daniel Meyer, Edwin Outwater, Steven Schick, Gerard Schwarz, and Bramwell Tovey.  

Passionate about fostering the talent of the next generation, Fung has mentored young composers in programs at the London Symphony Orchestra, the Julliard School, American Composers Forum, Alba Music Festival, San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players, and Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. She has been a guest educator at many organizations including the Mostly Modern Summer Music Festival, the New York State School Music Association, the Longy School, and Luna Composition Lab. 

Born in Edmonton, Canada, Fung began her composition studies with composer Violet Archer and received her doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York. She currently lives in California with her husband Charles Boudreau, their son Julian and dog Coco. Learn more at www.vivianfung.ca.