Betty Ann (Siu Junn) Wong (born September 6, 1938) is an American author, composer, [1] and multi-media musician. She received the 1988 Hollywood Dramalogue Critics Award for Outstanding Achievement for Original Music Theater for her work on Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions. She has also composed film scores for Academy Award-winning movie producers Allie Light and Irving Saraf.
A native of San Francisco, Wong and her twin sister Shirley grew up speaking Cantonese at home as well as English. Wong began piano lessons at age seven with Eva Chan, then studied with Lev Shorr. [2] She received a B.A. in music from Mills College in 1960, where she studied with Morton Subotnick, Nathan Rubin, and Colin Hampton, and performed with Hysteresis, a women's creative arts group that included several Bay-area artists. [3] In 1971, she completed a master's degree in music at the University of California (San Diego), where she studied composition with Pauline Oliveros, Robert Erickson, and Kenneth Gaburo. Wong also studied Chinese music with David Liang, Lawrence Lui, and Leo Lew. [4]
In addition to piano, Wong plays sitar, guzheng, saz (a Turkish lute), kanjira and several other traditional Asian instruments. She has worked as a piano teacher at the San Francisco Music Conservatory and the University of California (San Diego). She has also worked as an arts and crafts instructor and coordinator for the Community Center Chinese Music Workshops, where she and her sister, Shirley began teaching Chinese music in 1973. The workshops were a joint project of the Community Center and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, funded through a Rockefeller grant.
With Shirley, Wong co-manages and performs with the Flowing Stream Ensemble, a sizhu (traditional silk and bamboo orchestra) [5] which was founded in 1973. [6] American composer and ethnomusicologist Valerie Samson also played with the group and studied with Wong.
After visiting New Delhi in 1974, Wong became interested in Hindustani music. She returned to California and took classes at the Center for World Music at the Julian Morgan Theater in Berkeley, California. Wong founded the Phoenix Spring Ensemble in 1977 to integrate European classical music, American jazz improvisation, and extended instrumental techniques with traditional Chinese music. [7]
Wong composed film scores for the Academy Award-winning movie producers Allie Light and Irving Saraf. [8] In 1988, she received the Hollywood Dramalogue Critics Award for Outstanding Achievement for Original Music Theater for her work with the American Conservatory Theater's production of Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions. She has directed the Pursuit of Excellence Concert Series since 1990. Wong is also a board member of the Junior Bach Society.
Wong's works include:
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the founding members of California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for many years.
Olga Neuwirth is an Austrian contemporary classical composer, visual artist and author. She gained fame mainly through her operas and music theater works, which often deal with topical and decidedly political themes of identity, violence and intolerance.
Tania León is a Cuban-born American composer of both large scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations.
Andrew Welsh Imbrie was an American contemporary classical music composer and pianist.
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The San Francisco Tape Music Center, or SFTMC, was founded in the summer of 1962 by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick as a collaborative, "non profit corporation developed and maintained" by local composers working with tape recorders and other novel compositional technologies, which functioned both as an electronic music studio and concert venue. Composer Pauline Oliveros, artist Tony Martin and technician William Maginnis eventually joined the SFTMC.
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Nellie Wong is an American poet and activist for feminist and socialist causes. Wong is also an active member of the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.
Carla Lucero is an American composer and librettist. A native of Manhattan Beach, California, she now resides in Napa, California. She is of New Mexican and South Asian descent. While at CalArts, she studied with composers Rand Steiger, Leonard Rosenman and Alan Chapman. Her work is concentrated in opera, ballet and chamber
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Laura Elise Schwendinger was the first composer to win the American Academy in Berlin's Berlin Prize.
Jacqueline Nova Sondag (1935–1975) was a Colombian musician, author and composer. She is often cited as having initiated Colombia's electroacoustic musical practices.
Gabriela Ortiz is a Mexican music educator and composer.
Carolyn Yarnell is an American composer and visual artist. A recipient of the Rome Prize, Charles Ives Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, she is particularly noted for works which combine visual and musical depictions of landscape and light, many of which were inspired by the landscapes of her native California.
Theresa Wong is an American cellist, vocalist, composer and improviser in the field of experimental music. In 2013 she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Hsiung-Zee Wong is a composer, artist, and designer who was born in Hong Kong.
Margaret Lee Scoville was an American composer of chamber, electronic and piano music.
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