Ying Wang

“I live and form my identity as a contemporary composer from China with a keen and critical eye on the entanglements of politics, culture, society and technology and their consequences. I am looking for a contrasting and multishaped combination of my three major tools: the traditional instruments of the European music and their extended techniques, the critical examination of my Chinese heritage and the current possibilities of electronics. In my music I transform the world of today, its crises and tragedies, as well as its beauty and diversity – there is both screaming criticism and delightful admiration for this world in my music.” Ying WANG  王颖

Ying Wang's compositions can be described as sonorous, dramatic, and distinctive. The contrasts and divisions in her birthplace in Shanghai as well as in her new home in Berlin are not only musically reflected in her works. Time and again, she takes up social themes such as environmental pollution, global social grievances, political persecution, or the relationship between man and technology. In her work, she constantly seeks new points of contact with other media and arts such as dance, video, digital art, light, visual art, and performance. 

Among the numerous world premieres of the already closing 2022/23 season is her highly successful work of music theatre Lorry 39, which was created for the Freiburg Theatre and the SWR Experimental Studio. The inspiration for this work was the tragic death of 39 people in a freight container. At the end of 2022, the Quatuor Diotima also premiered Copy Left at the Philharmonie de Paris, a work in which Ying Wang addresses her externally imposed role as a mediator between cultures. At the Berlin Ultraschall Festival in early 2023, the composer was featured, among other works, with the world premiere of 528Hz 8va for orchestra and Minimoog. This extended version of the composition 528hz for orchestra which premiered in Essen in 2021 – optimistic and powerful music that deliberately avoids dramatic contrasts – was launched by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Karen Kamensek. Last bit... premiered in April by Ensemble Reflektor under Holly Hyun Choe at Podium Esslingen and explores the relationship between AI and human thought. In May, the Asianart Ensemble premiered EMULsonic for koto and quartet at the Konzerthaus Berlin. Contemporary poems by Chinese lyricists served as the basis for five intermezzi entitled Of Detours and Updates, which were commissioned by KlangForum Heidelberg in May 2023 and performed between the six movements of Mahler's Lied von der Erde. Ying Wang is currently working on new works as part of a one-year residency at the Villa Concordia in Bamberg.

Ying Wang has worked with numerous orchestras in Europe and Asia, including the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra, ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, and SWR Symphony Orchestra. Her works have been performed under the direction of conductors such as Marin Alsop, Markus Stenz, Brad Lubman, Johannes Kalitzke, Gregor Mayrhofer, Julien Leroy, and Marcus Creed. She has cooperated with ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Resonanz, Quatuor Diotima, Phoenix Basel, the ensemble of the International Ensemble Modern Academy, Musica Assoluta, Lucerne Festival Ensemble, Mosaik Ensemble, MAM.Manufaktur für aktuelle Musik, Ensemble PHACE, and Ensemble Kontrapunkte.

Ying Wang has been awarded numerous prizes and scholarships for her work. Among others, she received the production prize of the Giga Hertz Prize and the composition prize of the 5th Brandenburg Biennale in 2013, the IRINO PRIZE for chamber orchestra in Tokyo in 2014, and the Heidelberg Female Artist Prize in 2017. The portrait CD Tun Tu was released in 2017 on the Wergo label.

Ying Wang began her composition training at the conservatory in her home city of Shanghai before postgraduate studies took her to Germany in 2003. Her teachers at the Cologne University of Music and Dance included York Höller, Michael Beil, Rebecca Saunders, and Johannes Schöllhorn.  In 2010 she completed her studies in contemporary music at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts on a scholarship from the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA). Ying Wang took part in the Cursus de Composition et d'informatique musicale/Ircam Paris in 2012. She has been teaching composition at the Shanghai Conservatory since 2013.

​www.yingwang.de​

Season 2023/24

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