Fang Man

Hailed as “inventive and breathtaking” by the New York Times, Fang Man is a Chinese-born American composer educated in China, the United States, and Europe. She has been influenced by both Eastern and Western musical and literary traditions, often borrowing materials and ideas from traditional Chinese operas, instrumental music, and folk music, blending them with Western techniques and forms. Over the years, she has developed a keen interest in interdisciplinary art involving dance, visual arts, film, opera, and theatre.

Her music has been performed worldwide by notable orchestras and ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra New Music Group under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Camerata Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mannheimer Philharmoniker, Basel Sinfonietta, American Composers Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, National Orchestre de Lorraine, Minnesota Orchestra, Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Aldeburgh Symphony Orchestra, Peabody Symphony Orchestra, Baldwin-Wallace Symphony Orchestra, USC Wind Ensemble, Prism Saxophone Quartet, Dolce Suono Ensemble, Ensemble UnitedBerlin, Cassatt String Quartet, Music from China, among others. In 2019-20, she was featured as the composer-in-residence with the Mannheimer Philharmoniker under Boian Videnoff in Germany for their 2019-20 season to celebrate the orchestra’s 10th Anniversary, which includes performances and recordings of her orchestral works. Her newest commission from the San Francisco Symphony and League of American Orchestras funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation is a large-scale Sheng (Chinese mouth organ) concerto to be premiered by Sheng virtuoso Wu Wei and conducted by SFSO’s new director Esa-Pekka Salonen in the 2021-2022 season.

She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Association Commission, an Underwood/ACO Commission, Toru Takemitsu Award (Japan), Opera America Discovery Grant, the National Endowment for the Arts Award, Siemens Berlin Music Foundation Commission, NewMusicUSA Commission, the 47th UWRF Commissioned Composer, Dolce Suono Ensemble Mahler-Schoenberg Project Commission, Prism Saxophone Quartet /Music From China Commission, USC Provost Grant, Bank of America Gallery Commission, the Darmstadt Stipend-Prize-Award, SACEM Scholarship (France), SC Arts Fellowship, Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, Frank Huntington Beebe Fellowship, Music from China Award, among others. She has been invited to new music festivals such as the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Centre Acanthes (France); Darmstadt New Music Festival, Festival Blurred Edges, Global Ear Festival, Sinus~Ton Festival (Germany); Gaudeamus Music Week (the Netherlands); Cabrillo Festival, Aspen Music Festival, June in Buffalo, and Bowdoin Summer Music Festival (USA), among others. She was invited as a resident composer at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida, Aldeburgh Music Centre (UK), and Civitella Ranieri Music Foundation (Italy).

Fang’s primary teachers include Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra at Cornell Univ., where she obtained a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. She was chosen to participate in the one-year Computer Music and Composition courses at IRCAM-Paris, where she studied composition with Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Yan Marez, and Tristan Murail. She also studied with Richard Toensing and Michael Theodore at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Before she moved to the United States, she obtained a Bachelor of Music degree from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she studied with Du Ming-Xin and Ye Xiao-Gang.

Fang Man is currently an Associate Professor of Composition at the University of South Carolina School of Music. She previously held positions at the Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music and Duke University.