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Born in Takeo, Cambodia in 1942, acclaimed composer Chinary Ung is an important figure for both the Cambodian diaspora and 20th-century music. He came of age after Cambodia achieved independence from French colonial rule in 1953. Ung’s early life in the Kingdom of Cambodia, ruled by King Norodom Sihanouk, was quiet and surrounded by his large family as he recalled in an oral history interview by Thuy Vo Dang (2019).
CHILDHOOD.mp3Chinary Ung recollects the first time he understood his love for music during his early childhood.
Chinary Ung had nine siblings, the eight pictured here from left to right are: Phal Lavy, Seng-Ny, Phanny, Sunnary, Channary, Thannary/Helen, Chinary, Sirath; Amrett (front).
Chinary Ung with his “American mother,” Rose Marie Himes and her daughter Rita, in 1964.
In 1964, he received a scholarship to study clarinet at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. Upon graduating in 1968, he was scheduled to return to Cambodia, but through a chance encounter, received support from the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fund to continue his music studies in the United States. Chinary earned his DMA in composition from Columbia University in 1974. As Chinary launched his career teaching and composing music in the U.S., the Khmer Rouge rose to power, systematically destroying the people of Cambodia. With much of the art, culture and musicians gone, he took a hiatus from composing to focus on rescuing surviving family members, reconstituting Cambodian musical traditions, and sharing these traditions with Cambodian refugees.
A rehearsal of Annica for orchestra at Northern Illinois University. Dekalb, Illinois in the late 1970’s.
Chinary with his students from Connecticut College, circa 1980.
An article in the New York Times in 1989 highlights Chinary Ung’s historic achievement as the first American to win the Grawemeyer Award, the most distinguished prize for composers.
An early composition by Chinary Ung before he completed his doctorate from Columbia University.
Chinary and Susan at their Cambodian wedding ceremony in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 4, 1984.
During this time, Chinary met violist, Susan Pounders, whom he would later marry. Together, they started the Nimrita Composers Institute, which encourages new creativity in young composers from Cambodia and the wider Mekong region. Chinary Ung has developed a musical language that combines influences of Southeast Asia and Cambodia with the instrumental practices of contemporary Western concert music. He describes his vision: “Basically, I want to offer myself as a musician, a composer, and an educator. Also people call me as a cultural leader, I want to show them, the younger generation especially, the native village musicians, to encourage them, to restart, compose new and newer pieces. Because, believe it or not, the Cambodians stopped composing for maybe a century or longer.”
Chinary Ung currently teaches composition at the University of California, San Diego.
Chinary Ung received the Grawemeyer Award (considered classical music's Nobel prize) in 1989. He was the first American composer to win this prestigious award. Additionally, he received from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kennedy Center and the Guggenheim, Koussevitzky, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations.
Over the past forty years Chinary Ung has developed a musical language that indicates an open ear toward the sounds of the East—Southeast Asia and his native Cambodia in particular—as well as the textures and instrumental practices of contemporary Western concert music. From the solo ‘cello piece Khse Buon, to the Grawemeyer Award-winning Inner Voices, to the epic Aura, Ung’s music is characterized by a vivid sound world with an intense emotional trajectory. This sketch (left) shows how he works.
In 1980, Chinary Ung and Susan Pounders (now Susan Ung) collaborated on his first solo work for cello/viola, KHSE BUON. Their partnership would go on to explore Chinary’s musical convention of musicians performing extensive vocalizations while playing their instruments. Susan has been part of several premieres and recordings of Chinary’s works over the subsequent forty years.
Mom speaking about KHse Buon Score.m4aSusan Ung speaking about the Khse Buon score.
Listen to Some of Chinary's Compositions!
Listen to Some of Chinary's Compositions!
From the description of OSSIA New Music's video:
Spiral is the first of Ung’s fourteen works in a series for different instrumentations, using modal melodies and small motifs that reappear, transformed. The idea of a spiral—something that circles back but continues going—proved especially inspirational to Ung. He became so obsessed by spirals he had to force himself to stop, fearful he was falling into a pattern. “I stopped (writing spirals) for eight years,” Ung said. “How did I stop? Our house is on the top of a hill, and we built a 17-foot-diameter sunken patio (in a circular shape). I made the patio not just as something in the middle of my garden in my backyard, but as a mental mark to stop me from composing this spiral.” But his patio was purposely imperfect and left incomplete. “It was calculated that way,” Ung said. “I don’t believe in a complete loop or circle; I always leave room for negotiation—in fight, in war, in love, in teaching, in anything.”
Susan Ung performs Chinary's Singing Inside Aura III with the National Gugak Center of Korea: Creative Traditional Orchestra. She simultaneously plays the viola while singing. This performance took place at the University of California, Santa Cruz's Music Center Recital Hall for the Pacific Rim Music Festival in 2017.
From the description of University of California Television (UCTV)'s video:
George Lewis welcomes Cambodian composer Chinary Ung and violist Susan Ung for a demonstration of the unusual sounds of traditional Cambodian instruments and the effect of culture on music.
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