Composer Yang Yong was born in Beijing, China. The earliest musical influence on him came from the Peking Opera, folk songs and many kinds of folk story tellings in northern China. Yang Yong received a Ph.D. in composition from Brandeis University and is a faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Composer Yang Yong was born in Beijing, China. The earliest musical influence on him came from the Peking Opera, folk songs and many kinds of folk story tellings in northern China. Yang Yong received a Ph.D. in composition from Brandeis University and is a faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Yang Yong has received grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Chinese Opera & Ballet House and is currently working on piece for the San Jose Symphony and a piece for the American saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky and the Shanghai Symphony in China and the New England Conservatory Symphony. Yang's compositions have received awards including several ASCAP Standard Awards, the first prizes for the 1995 International Award for Musical Composition Ciutat de Tarragona in Spain, the 1992 Valentino Bucchi Prize in Rome, Italy, the 1991 Washington International Composition, the 1991 ALEA III International Composition Competition, the 1993 Marian & Iwanna Kots Prize in Ukraine, among others.
Many of his recent compositions were influenced by either the Chinese folk music or musics of other cultures. His music has been played in the United States, Italy, England, Australia, Spain, Korea, Yugoslavia, Canada, China, and the former Soviet Union by the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Dniepropetrovsk Symphony Orchestra in Ukraine, the China Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Korean Chamber Ensemble, the ISCM World Music Days, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, ALEA III, the Lydian String Quartet, Sydney Alpha Ensemble in Australia, Belgrade TV in Yugoslavia, among others, and has attracted considerable attention both locally in Boston and internationally.
His music is described by Richard Buell of The Boston Globe as "the freshest compositional 'ear' in evidence", "teemed with fresh and unusual combinations of tone color - a decorative, poised undertaking with nothing meretricious about it".