Composer Chou Wen-chung’s Centennial Performance

The concert on March 21, 2024, will honor Wen-chung’s music and his achievements during his almost 30-year tenure at Columbia University

After arriving in the U.S. in 1946, the Chinese composer Chou Wen-chung (1923-2019) studied with Nicholas Slonimsky at the New England Conservatory of Music, and with Edgard Varèse, who became his teacher and mentor in New York City.

In the early 1950s, Wen-chung undertook graduate work at Columbia University with Otto Luening, and further studies with Bohuslav Martinu and musicologist Paul Henry Lang.

He soon began a teaching career at the university, which spanned nearly 30 years from 1964 to 1991. During this time, he developed an internationally acclaimed composition program and led academic affairs for all the creative arts for 13 years.

As a composer, he was known for his unique ability to merge both Eastern and Western styles, techniques, and tropes in his works. Also an educator, he helped mentor the next generation of musicians from China, including Tan Dun, Pulitzer Prize winner Zhou Long, Chen Yi, and Bright Sheng. 

In 1978, Wen-chung founded the Center for United States-China Arts Exchange (UCSD), which has since collaborated with specialists and institutions from East/Southeast Asia on projects including Japan’s Pacific Music Festival.

More outcomes of the program have included an arts education program in China spanning 15 years, and an ongoing project that began in 1990 for cultural conservation and development in China’s Yunnan province — one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world.

Other initiatives to honor Wen-chung’s legacy have involved commissioning works in his name in China and the U.S., and a lecture series at the 21st Century China Center at UCSD. 

Wen-chung was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music and Asian Composers League, and a recipient of France’s Officier des Arts et Lettres.

To celebrate his legacy and centennial, the Spiralis Music Trust and the Columbia University music department are sponsoring a performance at Columbia’s Miller Theatre on March 21, 2024, at 7:30 PM. 

The concert program will include Wen-chung’s selections, including In the Mode of Shang (1956) which will see its U.S. premiere; The Willows are New (1957) for piano; Yu Ko (Fisherman’s Song) (1965); Twilight Colors (2007); and Ode to Eternal Pine (2009).

For tickets, click here. A short, informal conversation between Wen-chung’s sons and musical associates will follow the intermission.

Playing in the concert will be members of the New York-based CONTINUUM chamber ensemble. Led by its conductor and pianist Joel Sachs, the group comprises violinist Renée Jolles, violist Stephanie Griffin, cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper, flutist Emily Duncan, and clarinetist Moran Katz, among others. 

Since its founding in 1966, CONTINUUM has won the Ernst von Siemens International Music Prize and four ASCAP awards for “Adventuresome Programming.” Performing nationally and abroad, the ensemble has also appeared on CBS-TV, National Public Radio, the Voice of America, and many European networks.