Since
then, Vivian has built up an impressive body of compositions
commissioned and performed by such ensembles as the Seattle Symphony,
San José Chamber Orchestra, members of the Lausanne Chamber
Orchestra, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra,
New England Philharmonic, American String Quartet, Avalon String
Quartet, Vancouver New Music, Music From China, and American
Opera Projects, to name a few.
Vivian
has also been composer-in-residence of the Music in the Loft
chamber music series in Chicago, the
San José Chamber Orchestra, Music Teachers' Association
of California, and the Billings Symphony, and she has received
numerous awards and grants from ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center,
American Composers' Forum, Meet the Composer, and the Canada
Council for the Arts.
Vivian's
music was recently described by the San José Mercury News as "enchanting . . . .
[H]er music . . . summons images of dusk and reaches for hidden
places and states of mind." Vivian
was born in Edmonton, Canada, in 1975 and began her composition
studies with Canadian composer Violet Archer. Other early influences
on Vivian's music included her mentors David Diamond, Narcis
Bonet, and Robert Beaser, all of whom gave her a strong sense
of craft and discipline.
Since
earning her doctorate from The Juilliard School in 2002,
Vivian has increasingly embraced
non-Classical influences, including jazz and non-Western sources
such as folksongs
from the minority regions of China and Indonesian gamelan
music. Vivian traveled to Bali, Indonesia for two months
in the summer
of 2004 as part of the Asia Pacific Performance Exchange
Program, sponsored by the UCLA Center for Intercultural
Performance.
In Bali, she studied gamelan and collaborated with distinguished
Asian and American artists.
Her
music has also been showcased in Asia: Vivian's String
Quartet, for example, which was
premiered by the Avalon String Quartet in January 2004
at the Columbus
Chamber Music Society in Ohio, was performed by the American
String Quartet in Beijing during the summer of 2004 as
part of
that quartet's residency with the Great Wall International
Music Academy and Festival. Vivian's
upcoming projects include commissions for the San José Chamber
Orchestra, Music in the Loft, the Chicago Children's Choir,
violinist Mari Kimura, and the Shanghai Quartet. A recording
of her Clarinet
Quintet is scheduled to be released on the Cedille Record
label in the fall of 2008. Vivian and the puppet company Drama
of
Works received a residency at the HERE Arts Center in New York
City
to complete work on an hour-long, shadow-puppet project based
on Sleepy Hollow . A short version of that project was premiered
January 2006, and the full-length version will be performed
at the Henry Street Settlement in New York during the fall
of 2006.
Vivian
is on the Literature and Materials of Music faculty at The Juilliard
School and organizes the music series World
Music
at Juilliard. She is an associate composer of the Canadian
Music Centre. |