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Episode 95 - Viet Cuong

Jan 21, 2019

Acclaimed young composer Viet Cuong joins the show to share his thoughts about band music, his work as a composer, and how growing up in the Lassiter band helped him fit in and find his place in the world.

Topics:

  • 
Viet’s background and how he got his start as a musician, percussionist, and composer.
  • How band and music helped Viet “find his place” in the world and the importance of band as a place where kids who are struggling to feel accepted have a place where they can fit in and grow.
  • Growing up in the legendary Lassiter Band Program under the baton of Alfred Watkins.
  • Thought about what band directors can do to support young musicians who are writing music or want to become composers.
  • Thoughts about academic music, new music for band, and some insights into building design at Princeton.
  • The Blue Dot Collective

Links:

Biography:

Called “alluring” and “wildly inventive” by The New York Times, the “ingenious” and “knockout” (Times Union) music of Viet Cuong (b. 1990) has been performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as Sō Percussion, Eighth Blackbird, Alarm Will Sound, Sandbox Percussion, the PRISM Quartet, JACK Quartet, Gregory Oakes, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, and Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, among many others. Viet’s music has been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Aspen Music Festival, New Music Gathering, Boston GuitarFest, International Double Reed Society Conference, US Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, and on American Public Radio’s Performance Today. He also enjoys composing for the wind ensemble medium, and his works for winds have amassed over one hundred performances by conservatory and university ensembles worldwide, including at Midwest, WASBE, and CBDNA conferences.

Viet holds the Curtis Institute of Music’s Daniel W. Dietrich II Composition Fellowship as an Artist Diploma student of David Ludwig and Jennifer Higdon. Viet received his MFA from Princeton University as a Naumburg and Roger Sessions Fellow, and he is currently finishing his PhD there. At Princeton he studied with Steve Mackey, Donnacha Dennehy, Dan Trueman, Dmitri Tymoczko, Paul Lansky, and Louis Andriessen. Viet holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Pulitzer Prize-winner Kevin Puts and Oscar Bettison. While at Peabody, he received the Peabody Alumni Award (the Valedictorian honor) and the Gustav Klemm Award for excellence in composition. Viet has been a fellow at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, Cabrillo Festival’s Young Composer Workshop, Copland House’s CULTIVATE emerging composers workshop, and was also a scholarship student at the Aspen, Bowdoin, and Lake Champlain music festivals. Additionally, he has received artist residencies from Yaddo, Copland House, Ucross Foundation, and Atlantic Center for the Arts (under Melinda Wagner, 2012 and Christopher Theofanidis, 2014).

Viet is a recipient of the Barlow Endowment Commission, Copland House Residency Award, ASCAP Morton Gould Composers Award, Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composers Award, Theodore Presser Foundation Music Award, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Call for Scores, Cortona Prize, New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, Boston GuitarFest Composition Competition, and Walter Beeler Memorial Prize, among others. In addition, he received honorable mentions in the Harvey Gaul Composition Competition and two consecutive ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prizes. Scholarships include the Evergreen House Foundation scholarship at Peabody, a 2010 Susan and Ford Schumann Merit Scholarship from the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the 2011 Bachrach Memorial Gift from the Bowdoin International Music Festival.