Chinary Ung

Chinary Ung is a Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, where he joined the Department of Music faculty in 1995. He also serves as Presidential Fellow and Senior Composer in Residence at Chapman University and was the Karel Husa Visiting Professor in Composition at Ithaca College for the 2017-2018 academic year. Ung earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts in music composition from Columbia University under mentor Chou Wen-chung, following studies in clarinet performance at the Manhattan School of Music after departing Cambodia in 1964. Throughout his career, he has taught at institutions including Northern Illinois University, Connecticut College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Arizona State University, mentoring generations of young composers. Additionally, he held the presidency of the Khmer Studies Institute from 1980 to 1985, advised the National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, and co-founded the Nirmita Composers Institute with his wife Susan Ung to nurture Southeast Asian musicians.

Ung is renowned for his compositions that integrate Cambodian traditional music elements with contemporary Western techniques, often inspired by dreams, pictorial sources, Buddhist meditation, and spiritual openness. Key works include Inner Voices (1986), the first American recipient of the 1989 Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition; the Spirals series; Aura (2005) for two sopranos and chamber ensemble; Rain of Tears (2006) concerto for chamber orchestra; and Singing Inside Aura III (2013) for amplified singing violist and Korean traditional orchestra. His extensive catalog, published exclusively by C.F. Peters Corporation, features commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fromm Music Foundation, Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and others, with performances by major orchestras worldwide including those in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tokyo, and Sydney. Recordings appear on labels such as Bridge, CRI, New World, CAMBRIA, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Honors encompass Guggenheim and Ford Foundation fellowships, the inaugural 2004 Joyce Award, the 2014 John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award from the Asian Cultural Council, and 2020 induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the first for a UC San Diego faculty member. In the 1970s, amid the Cambodian Genocide, he preserved Khmer traditions by compiling Folkways recordings of traditional music, forming a Pinpeat ensemble, and touring the United States.

Professional Email: c1ung@ucsd.edu