YANG, Tsung-Hsien

Born in 1952 in Taiwan, Tsung-hsien Yang attended Tunghai University and went to the United States for graduate studies in music composition, studying first with Peter Racine Fricker at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then with Arthur Berger, Harold Shapero, and Martin Boykan at Brandeis University.  He completed his Ph D in 1987, since then he has held positions at Bates College, Bowdoin College, The United World College-USA, Soochow University, National Chiao Tung University.  Most recently he was a Professor of music at Taipei National University of the Arts from which he has retired since 2017.  He has been the resident composer for Contemporary Chamber Orchestra Taipei (CCOT) since its inception in 1994.

Yang returned to Taiwan in 1991 and has since combined the considerable demands of his teaching with a composing schedule which maintains his position as one of the most frequently performed composers in Taiwan.  His music has been featured in concerts held in various cities in Asia, Europe and the Americas.  In 1999 Yang was invited to be the guest composer at Exeter University with a commission of a quartet by the resident ensemble, the Gemini, for their concert season while also funded by the British Council to lecture at several other universities (York, Manchester, Durham, New Castle, Bristol, Cardiff) in the UK.  On December 8th of 2002, the Forum Music Group in Taipei held an evening of concert with a discussion panel devoted entirely to his music as one of their The Composers of Our Time Series.  Yang’s most recent commissions included those from the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), Percussions Claviers de Lyon, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra (NTSO), and the Asian Composers League (ACL).

Yang’s music has become ever more contemplative since the beginning of this millennium as his attitude towards the relationship between creativities and life continually evolves: by setting music writing against personal life, his compositions strive to reflect on experiences that have been shaped by memories that are unique to himself only.  As a result, his compositions have since become more and more lyrical in nature and have always emitted expressions rich in referential meanings.