Lam Bun-Ching (; b.

Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...

, 1954) is a Chinese 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 ...

, pianist, and conductor.

Early life and training

Lam holds a B.A. degree in piano performance from the

Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public research university in Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong, formally established in 1963 by a charter granted by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It is the territory's second-oldest university and ...

(1976). She obtained a scholarship from the

University of California at San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

, where she studied composition with

Bernard Rands Bernard Rands (born 2 March 1934 in Sheffield, England) is a British-American contemporary classical music composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna ...

Robert Erickson Robert Erickson (March 7, 1917 – April 24, 1997) was an American composer. Education Erickson was born in Marquette, Michigan. He studied with Ernst Krenek from 1936 to 1947: "I had already studied—and abandoned—the twelve tone sys ...

Roger Reynolds Roger Lee Reynolds (born July 18, 1934) is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, and for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds with those newly enabled by ...

, and

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Cente ...

, earning a Ph.D. in 1981.

Career

In 1981, she was invited to join the music faculty of the

Cornish College of the Arts Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art college in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1914. History Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of pi ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, where she taught until 1986. She has also served as the Jean MacDuff Vaux Composer-in-Residence at

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, and in 1997 she served as a visiting professor of composition at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

and at

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

. Her music has been recorded on the

CRI CRI or CRi may refer to: Organizations * Canadian Rivers Institute, for river sciences, University of New Brunswick * Cancer Research Institute, New York, US * Centro de Relaciones Internacionales (International Relations Center), Universidad N ...

Tzadik Tzadik ( he, צַדִּיק , "righteous ne, also ''zadik'', ''ṣaddîq'' or ''sadiq''; pl. ''tzadikim'' ''ṣadiqim'') is a title in Judaism given to people considered righteous, such as biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The ...

Nimbus Nimbus, from the Latin for "dark cloud", is an outdated term for the type of cloud now classified as the nimbostratus cloud. Nimbus also may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Halo (religious iconography), also known as ''Nimbus'', a ring of ligh ...

Koch International Classics Entertainment One Ltd., trading as eOne, is an American-owned Canadian multinational entertainment company. Based in Toronto, Ontario, the company is primarily involved in the acquisition, distribution, and production of films and television s ...

, Sound Aspect, and

Tellus Tellus is a Latin word meaning "Earth" and may refer to: * An alternative name for the planet Earth * Tellus of Athens, a citizen of ancient Athens who was thought to be the happiest of men * Tellus Mater or Terra Mater, the ancient Roman earth mo ...

labels. Lam divides her time between

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and New York.

Works

* Chamber opera '' Wenji: Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute'' "文姬" 2002 to a libretto bu

Xu Ying Xu Ying (徐瑛, born 1962) is a Chinese librettist. His traditional Beijing opera librettos include Hunchback Prime Minister Liu (2002), Sun Wu the Strategist (2002), Cai Wenji (2003). He wrote the libretto for Bun Ching Lam's chamber opera Wen ...

.Edward Davis ''Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture'' Page 437. 2005. "1954, Macao Composer Lam Bun-ching, composer, pianist and conductor, challenges cultural boundaries by ... Her contemporary chamber opera ''Wenji: Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute'', which premiered at Asia Society in New York in 2002, ... It is accompanied by a mixed orchestra of Chinese and Western instruments and sung in Chinese and English, with the latter language being reserved for the 'barbarian' Mongols."

References

External links

Bun-Ching Lam official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lam, Bun-Ching Women classical composers 1954 births Living people 20th-century classical composers 21st-century classical composers Hong Kong women classical composers Hong Kong classical composers Macau people Cornish College of the Arts faculty Pupils of Robert Erickson Pupils of Roger Reynolds Pupils of Pauline Oliveros 20th-century women composers 21st-century women composers