Ken Ueno (born January 11, 1970 in

Bronxville, New York Bronxville is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States, located approximately north of Midtown Manhattan. It is part of the town of Eastchester. The village comprises one square mile (2.5 km2) of land in its entirety, a ...

) is an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

Career

Ueno pursued initial studies in music at the

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a fort, since it sits on strategic high groun ...

in West Point, NY, but soon transferred to

Berklee College of Music Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level cours ...

, where he earned a B.M. in Film Scoring/Composition ''Summa Cum Laude'' (1992)'';'' his graduate studies at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

and

Yale School of Music The Yale School of Music (often abbreviated to YSM) is one of the 12 professional schools at Yale University. It offers three graduate degrees: Master of Music (MM), Master of Musical Arts (MMA), and Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), as well as a joi ...

earned him Masters degrees; he later completed a doctorate at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. Ueno has taught at the

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMass Dartmouth or UMassD) is a public research university in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It is the southernmost campus of the University of Massachusetts system. Formerly Southeastern Massachusetts Un ...

, and now teaches at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He has served as co-director of Minimum Security Composers Collective, and has earned the rare distinction of having earned the highly selective American Academy prizes for both the Berlin and Rome fellowships, and has worked with premier ensembles internationally to considerable critical acclaim.

Works

Ken Ueno has composed for modern orchestra, jazz 'big band', chamber ensembles including woodwind quintet, choreographed dance pieces, and in a variety of other genres. As a performer, Ueno has performed at the Flea, New York City, collaborated with violist

Kim Kashkashian Kim Kashkashian (born August 31, 1952) is an American violist. She is recognized as one of the world's top violists. She has spent her career in the US and Europe and collaborated with many major contemporary composers. In 2013 she won a Grammy A ...

and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky on the works ''Hypnomelodiamachia'' for viola, percussion, and electronics (2007), and ''Two Hands'', a Kashkashian commission, for viola and percussion (2009). A monograph compact disc of three works for soloist(s) and orchestra, ''Talus'' for viola and orchestra, ''On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis'' for solo throat-singer and orchestra, and ''Kaze-no-Oka'' for biwa, shakuhachi, and orchestra, was released by the

Boston Modern Orchestra Project The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is a professional orchestra in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1996 by artistic director Gil Rose, its mission is to explore the connections between contemporary music and contemporary ...

in 2010. Ueno has also written for such ensembles as the So Percussion Group, Bang on a Can All-Stars,

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) is a performing arts organization and unionized chamber orchestra that commissions, performs, and records innovative new music from across cultures and stylistic traditions. SFCMP incorporated in ...

, Del Sol String Quartet, Prism Quartet, and eighth blackbird. Ueno's compositional approach frequently involves extra-musical modeling, including using images, cultural phenomena, or architecture as the basis for structural decisions, somewhat analogous to the use of architectural proportions in Renaissance music. ''Kaze-no-Oka'', for example, reflects in part the structure of the Japanese architect

Fumihiko Maki is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west. Early life Maki was born in Tokyo. A ...

's like-name
project
His ''Talus'' is, in a manner of speaking, a biography of a traumatic event in the life of its soloist, violist Wendy Richman, who shattered her ankle in a ten-foot fall. He is keenly interested in the process of exploring unique, in some sense irreproducible, sonic events linked to the performers for which his music is written. As a performer, Ueno is active as a throat-singing vocalist and performing with live electronics. He is an accomplished guitarist. In 2010, he was awarded the Berlin Prize residential fellowship in Music Composition at the

American Academy in Berlin The American Academy in Berlin is a private, independent, nonpartisan research and cultural institution in Berlin dedicated to sustaining and enhancing the long-term intellectual, cultural, and political ties between the United States and Germany ...

Awards

* 2010 Berlin Prize * 2007

Rome Prize The Rome Prize is awarded by the American Academy in Rome, in Rome, Italy. Approximately thirty scholars and artists are selected each year to receive a study fellowship at the academy. Prizes have been awarded annually since 1921, with a hiatus ...

* Fromm Music Foundation grant * Aaron Copland House grant * Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording grant *

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

grant * Belgian-American Education Foundation * First Prize in the 25th "Luigi Russolo" competition * Harvard University grant

Discography

*"Ken Ueno: Talus", BMOP/sound, BMOP1014 *"I screamed at the sea until nodes swelled up, then my voice became the resonant noise of the sea", in New Dialects, Centaur CRC 3038, Gregory Oakes, 2009 *"Synchronism Six-Zero", in One Minute More, Transatlantic Foundation for Music and Art B001J54A8S, Guy Livingston, 2008
Scrapyard Exotica
" by Del Sol String Quartet, Sono Luminus (2015) (featuring "Peradam" (2012)

References

External links

Artist's website
''Berklee College''
"Ken Ueno Interview"
''Composition Today''
"Ken Ueno (throat singer) and Joan Jeanrenaud (cello) @ BAM/PFA""On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis"
''University of California, Berkeley, Sounds of the Music Department''
"Spotlight Session: Decoding Ken Ueno"
''Counterstream Audio''
"Music Now Class performs Ken Ueno's Piece for Pieces of Paper"American Academy in Berlin"Biography and recording/info on 2015 composition Zetsu"
"San Francisco Contemporary Music Players {{DEFAULTSORT:Ueno, Ken 1970 births Living people American male composers 21st-century American composers American musicians of Japanese descent Berklee College of Music alumni Boston University College of Fine Arts alumni Yale School of Music alumni Harvard University alumni University of Massachusetts Dartmouth faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty Berlin Prize recipients People from Bronxville, New York Musicians from New York (state) 21st-century American male musicians