Lam Bun Ching
I was born in Macao and began studying piano at the age of seven. I gave my first public solo recital at fifteen. In 1976, I received a Bachelor degree in Piano Performance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and then accepted a scholarship from the University of California at San Diego, where I studied composition with Bernard Rands, Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and earned a Doctorate in 1981. In the same year, I was invited to join the music faculty of the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where I taught until 1986. I have won the coveted “Prix de Rome” in 1991 as well as first prizes at the Aspen Music Festival, the Northwest Composer’s Symposium, and the highest honour at the Shanghai Music Competition, which was the first international composers’contest to take place in China. I have also been a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, the most recent ones being a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Artsand Letters, and an Artist’s Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
My compositions have been performed by orchestras all over the world and featured in numerous music festivals. My music has been recorded on CRI, Tzadik, Nimbus, Koch International Classics, Sound Aspect and Tellus. I was a composer-in-residence at the American Dance Festival, the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’Forum of the East, and the Music Alive! Composer-in-Residence with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra for the 2000-2001 season. I have also served as Visiting Professor in Composition at the School of Music, Yale University, and at Bennington College in Vermont, and was also Composer-in-Residence at Mills College in California.
Since 2008, I have been the Composer-in-Residence of Macao Orchestra and created commissioned works including “Five Scenes of Macao” and “Macao Cantata”.
