Ming-Hsiu Yen

From Wind Repertory Project
Ming-Hsiu Yen

Biography

Ming-Hsiu-Yen (b. 1980, Taiwan) is a Taiwanese composer, pianist and educator.

Dr.. Yen holds degrees from the University of Michigan (DMA in composition; MM in composition and in piano performance) and the Eastman School of Music (BM in composition and in piano performance, with a distinguished honor of Performer's Certificate). At the University of Michigan, she was funded with full scholarship and was awarded the distinguished Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship during her final year. Her primary composition teachers have included Bright Sheng, William Bolcom Betsy Jolas, David Liptak, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Christopher Rouse, Steven Stucky, and Gordon Shi-Wen Chin. As a fellow of 2008 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, she worked with Aaron Jay Kernis. She has also studied with Herbert Willi at the 2007 Pacific Music Festival, and with Sydney Hodkinson at the 2006 Aspen Music Festival and School. Her piano teachers in the United States have included Logan Skelton, Nelita True and Vincent Lenti.

Her recent compositions have included Loi Siid Ca (2020) for NCO, the 2019 TCO opera production, My Mom Needs an Education, The Wire Dancer (2017), commissioned by the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Conservatory Competition, 2017 Hakka Musical Hope to Light (Taiwan), 2016 Hakka Musical Xiangsi - Nostalgia (Taiwan).

She has collaborated with a number of orchestras, including the Minnesota Orchestra, Taiwan Philharmonic, YinQi Symphony Orchestra and Choir (Taiwan), Dunshan Symphonic Wind Orchestra (China), University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Taipei National University of the Arts Symphony Orchestra, and with such ensembles as PRISM Quartet, Brave New Works, OSSIA, Music From China, among others.

Actively performing as a soloist and chamber musician, Dr. Yen was awarded prizes from the 2009 Grieg Festival Young Artists Competition and the 2006 Young Artist Competition of the Ann Arbor Society for Musical Arts. She is also a two-time winner of the University of Michigan Concerto Competition, performing concertos by Barber in 2004, by Corigliano in 2008, and Yen’s own concerto in 2005 with the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra. She is winner of the twenty-second Asian Composers League Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize and Heckscher Composition Prize, and was awarded prizes from the League of Composers/ ISCM-USA Competition, the governmental Literary and Artistic Creation Competition (Taiwan), and the Sun River Composition Competition (China).

Dr. Yen is currently associate professor of composition and theory at the Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan. She has also served as adjunct associate professor/composer-in-residence at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and taught music theory at the University of Michigan.


Works for Winds


Resources

  • The Horizon Leans Forward…, compiled and edited by Erik Kar Jun Leung, GIA Publications, 2021, p. 521-522.
  • Ming-Hsiu Yen website Accessed 4 April 2021