Biography

Photo © Yi Sun

Born in China, Fang Man began to study the piano at the age of five and composition at twelve. She entered the Xinghai Conservatory of Music (Guang Zhou) at the age of fourteen, where she studied composition with professor Cao Guang-Ping. In 1995, She won the first place to enter the prestigious Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, where she studied composition with professors Du Ming-Xin and Ye Xiao-Gang and received the Bachelor of Music Degree in 2000. Thanks to the generous fellowship awards from the Cecil Effinger Fundation, she studied with professors Richard Toensing and Michael Theodore at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 2000 to 2002. Since fall 2002, she has been pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Cornell University, where she studies composition with professors Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra, piano with Xak Bjerken, and digital/computer music with David Borden. In 2006, she was one of the ten composers chosen by IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, Centre Pompidou Paris, France) to participate in the computer and composition program, where she has studied with Brian Ferneyhough, Maro Lanza, Mikhail Malt, Yan Marez, and Tristan Murail.

Past credits include invitations to the Gaudeamus Music week 1996 (Amsterdam, Netherlands) and Centre Acanthes 1997 (Avignon, France), where she studied with Chen Qigang, Marc-Andre Dalbavie, and Marco Stroppa. Her String Quartet No. 1 was chosen for the "June in Buffalo" Festival 2001, and performed by the Cassatt String Quartet. In the same summer, a full scholarship to the Bowdoin Summer Festival enabled her to study with George Crumb and Samuel Adler. Her first commission was from the Bank of America for an art opening in Seattle, WA. Composition awards include the "Yan Huang Cup" Composition Prize, the Music From China Award, the Ishii Maki Composition Competition, the Sumner Redstone/Viacom Scholarship, two Cecil Effinger Fellowships, and the Sage and Olin Fellowships from Cornell University. In the fall of 2004, she was one of the seven composers chosen nation-wide to the Reading and Composers Institute of Minnesota Orchestra, where her work "AQUA-In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu" for large orchestra was read by the Minnesota Orchestra with Mischa Santora conducting, under the direction of Aaron Jay Kernis. In the summer of 2005, she was chosen with two bursary awards to attend the composition workshop at Centre Acanthes (Metz, France), where she studied with Wolfgang Rihm and Pascal Dusapin. At the meantime, her new orchestral work "Noir for orchestra" was premiered by the Orchestre National de Lorraine in Grande Salle, Metz, with Jacques Mercier conducting under the direction of Alessandro Solbiati.

In the May of 2006, she was chosen among the seven composers nation-wide to attend the 15th Annual Underwood New Music Readings by the American Composers Orchestra in New York City, where her work "Black and White" was read by ACO with George Manahan conducting. ACO then named her winner of the Underwood Commission, for a new work to be premiered by ACO at Carnegie Hall on February 20 2008. Her large orchestral work, "AQUA-In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu" has won the 3rd Prize of the Toru Takemitsu Award 2007. She was invited to Tokyo for the premier of this work by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra with Chikara Iwamura conducting on May 27 2007, at Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall. Her new work "Ambush from Ten Sides" for guitar(s) and live electronics was premiered in the season opening concert at the Espace de Projection, IRCAM-Centre Pompidou on October 6, 2007. Most recently, chosen by conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, she received a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra association to compose a new work for the 2008-9 season, which will be premiered by the LA Phil new music group under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen on April 7 2009, at Walt Disney Hall LA. She will also appear at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in the summer of 2008 to hear the premier performance of her short orchestral piece "Sketch", and to work with conductors Marin Alsop and Gustav Meier, composers Michael Daugherty and John Corigliano.

Fang Man is a member of the ASCAP and the American Music Center, and a recipient of the ASCAPlus Award and Composer Assistant Program Award.

George Crumb described her music “to be quite sophisticated technically and with pronounced qualities of originality and imagination.”

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