Composers Festival Spotlight: Wei-Chieh Lin

Wei-Chieh Lin

Today’s featured resident composer from the 2013 Mizzou International Composers Festival is Wei-Chieh Lin, who was born in Taichung, Taiwan, and now lives in New York City.

Lin earned his BM, MM, and DMA degrees in composition at The Juilliard School under the guidance of famed composer and teacher, the late Milton Babbitt. His works range from solo instrumental music to orchestral compositions to vocal and choral pieces, as well as jazz and folk arrangements.

Those works have been performed at venues in the U.S. and abroad, including the Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Centre Pompidou, Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, and the National Concert Halls in Taiwan.

Ensembles that have played or commissioned Lin’s music include the Ensemble InterContemporain, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Insomnio Ensemble, Xasax Ensemble, Makrokomos Ensemble, The New Juilliard Ensemble, Juilliard Orchestra, Hudson Symphony Orchestra, New York Classical Players Ensemble, Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, and Formosa Quartet, as well as members of eighth blackbird and Klangforum Wien.

Lin’s compositions have received a number of awards, including selection for the 2012 International Composer Pyramid Competition; Honorable Mention of the Gaudeamus Muziek Prize of 2011; two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards; first prizes in the 2009 and 2010 National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan Composition Competitions: three National Taiwan Symphony Composition Awards, and the Palmer Dixon Award from Juilliard.

He also has participated in music festivals including the Aspen Music Festival, Wellesley Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center, MusicX Festival, Académie musicale de Villecroze, Domain Forget, Asian Composers League Music Festival, Foundation Royaumont Music Festival and Manifeste/Acanthes@Ircam Composition Workshop, and been a resident at Cité International des Arts in Paris.

You can hear samples of Wei-Chieh Lin’s music in the embedded video window and audio player below.

Insomnio performing Lin’s “Tracing the Shadows of Broken Time” in September 2011 at Vredenburg Leeuwenbergh in Utrecht, Germany as part of Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2011.