Profiled in Edmonton Journal, December 2014

Two young Edmonton composers finding success on bigger stages

Vivian Fung, Alissa Cheung both grew up in Chinese-Canadian households

EDMONTON - It is a measure of the multicultural reach of our city that Edmonton’s leading younger composer was born here in 1975 to Chinese émigrés, who were themselves born in Vietnam and married in Hong Kong. Her name is Vivian Fung and she now lives in San Francisco after a spell in New York.I got the chance to meet Fung recently in the company of another young Edmonton composer of Chinese ethnicity, Alissa Cheung, who has been a violinist with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra but is herself about to leave on a new venture.Both are passionate about their dedication to their art: “Composing,” says Fung, “is as much a discipline as any other. I do it every day I can.” Both also emanate a kind of certainty in what they do, Fung in an ebullient way (like her music), Cheung more laconic, as befits someone who prefers to be pushing boundaries.Neither particularly feels any connection to the almost inevitable label ‘Chinese-origin woman composer.’“I was brought up in the Western culture and music,” points out Cheung, while Fung says simply, “I just feel I am a composer.”Just a composer, maybe, but Fung began playing the piano at the age of four, and studied composition first with that doyenne of woman composers, Edmonton’s Violet Archer, before graduating from New York’s Julliard School in 2002.Fung came to wider notice with her Violin Concerto No. 1 (2011), which won the 2013 Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year, after Naxos released a CD of her music in the series Canadian Classics.That CD is probably the best place for anyone to discover her music. Her style is bold, sometimes aggressive, always self-confident, and contemporary without being overtly so. There is almost always a tonal feel to her harmonies. She revels in larger orchestral sounds, and the Violin Concerto has some awesome solo writing (brilliantly played on the CD by Kristin Lee).The Piano Concerto (2009) on the same CD is more abrasive, with equally virtuoso, sometimes martial and percussive writing for the soloist, alternating with more delicate, gossamer passages. Both works were influenced by her discovery of Balinese Gamelan music, and other Eastern influences have crept in — the Vietnamese bird whistles, for example, in the opening to the Piano Concerto.Indeed, her discovery of the folk songs of China’s Yunnan Province led to a widely praised song cycle (Yunnan Folk Songs, 2011) and to ethno-musicological research in Southeast China in 2012.Her music strikes me as, above all, pictorial, even in such works as the Billy Collins Suite, her music colouring the spoken declamation of the American poet’s works (recorded on Cedille). Her emphatic rhythms, vivid colours and strong sense of architecture conjure up visual as much as emotional responses in the listener, and none more than a recent work heard at a Winspear Edmonton Symphony Orchestra concert on Nov. 29.Aqua (2013) was inspired by the architectural design of Chicago’s 82-storey skyscraper Aqua Tower (famous for its wavelike balconies), and commissioned by the Chicago Sinfonietta. It is a wonderfully atmospheric piece, shimmering in textures and harmonies. In its structural surety and interweaving of orchestral effects, it seemed to me a definite advance in her idiom. Here is a composer to watch — and one of ours, at that.Violinist Alissa Cheung — who was a student in my first-year English class at the University of Alberta some 10 years ago, when she played in the National Youth Orchestra of Canada — won the 2009 KWCO concerto competition. After spells at Tanglewood and McGill, she joined the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra four years ago.

Her passion, though, is new music (both writing it and playing it), and she is about to indulge that passion full-time. The Montreal-based Bozzini String Quartet has, since its foundation in 1999, become synonymous with new music, commissioning more than 130 works, premièring nearly 200 others. It has toured in Europe and Japan, has won numerous prizes, and even has its own record label.The second violinist, Mira Benjamin, has left for graduate studies, and Cheung has been chosen to replace her. After writing recently about the difficulties facing string quartet players in Edmonton, it is marvellous that one of them has found a place in a permanent, professional and internationally recognized quartet.Cheung is also a composer, and I greatly admired her piece for the new Bass Line Road ensemble, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. Here is another young composer worth watching.Cheung can be heard on Saturday, Dec. 27 at 6:30 in Holy Trinity Anglican Church (10037 84th Ave.), taking part in the Anne Burrows Music Foundation Benefit Recital. The foundation funds scholarships for gifted young musicians. Tickets $25 at the door.Finally, a mention of another CD with Edmonton connections I have really enjoyed this year. In a New Light by Voce Trio (Edmonton pianist Patricia Tao, violinist Jasmine Lin and Edmonton-born cellist Marina Hoover) is a recording of three gorgeously late-romantic piano trios by the Austrian Zemlinsky, the Czech Joseph Suk, and the Russian Arensky, that won’t be that well-known, but certainly deserve to be (Con Brio). Beautifully played and recorded, a worthy stocking-stuffer alongside that Vivian Fung CD.-by Mark MorrisOriginal article here.(From the Edmonton Journal on December 17th, 2014)