Winston Tong (born 1951 in San Francisco, California) is an actor, playwright, visual artist,

puppeteer A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, called a puppet, to create the illusion that the puppet is alive. The puppet is often shaped like a human, animal, or legendary creature. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from ...

, and singer-songwriter. He is best known for his vocals in

Tuxedomoon Tuxedomoon is an experimental, post-punk, new wave band from San Francisco, California, United States. The band formed in the late 1970s at the beginning of the punk rock movement. Pulling influence from punk and electronic music, the group, or ...

and for winning an

Obie award The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards originally given by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. In September 2014, the awards were jointly presented and administered with the A ...

in puppetry for ''Bound Feet'' in 1978.

Early years

Tong was born in the United States to Chinese parents exiled by the

Communist revolution A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution often, but not necessarily, inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism. Depending on the type of government, socialism can be used as an intermediate stage ...

. He graduated with a degree in theatre from the

California Institute of Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of b ...

in 1973.Winston Tong Biography at LTM
/ref> While at CalArts, he studied classical vocals with

Marni Nixon Margaret Nixon McEathron (February 22, 1930 – July 24, 2016), known professionally as Marni Nixon, was an American soprano and ghost singer for featured actresses in musical films. She is now recognized as the singing voice of leading a ...

.Hall, Gina
Winston Tong interview at Fallen Angels Digest
In 1969, Tong was commissioned to illustrate ''The Dinosaur Coloring Book'' by

Malcolm Whyte Malcolm Whyte is an author, editor, publisher, and founder of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco."Trustees,"
Carto ...

, which was first published by Troubador Press and later by

Price Stern Sloan Price Stern Sloan (originally known as Price/Stern/Sloan) or PSS! was a publisher (now an imprint of the Penguin Group) that was founded in Los Angeles in the early 1960s to publish the Mad Libs that Roger Price and Leonard Stern had concocted ...

Performance art

After graduating from CalArts, Tong established his reputation in the

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

with a string of charismatic, left-field performance pieces such as ''Wild Boys'', ''Eliminations'', ''Frankie and Johnnie'' and the award-winning ''Bound Feet'', which was loosely based on traditional Chinese puppet theatre. Tong performed three of his solo pieces at

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa E.T.C.) is an Off-Off-Broadway theatre founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer. Located in Manhattan's East Village, the theatre began in the ...

in April/May 1978. ''The Wild Boys'', identified on the show's program as a work in progress, incorporated work by

William Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

Brian Eno Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...

, George Olsen, Kawahara, Victoria Lowe, and Tuxedomoon. ''Bound Feet'' incorporated music by Erik Satie. ''À Rimbaud'' incorporated work by

Arthur Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he starte ...

and

Heitor Villa-Lobos Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and classical guitarist described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the ...

. He returned to La MaMa with Tuxedomoon bandmate Bruce Geduldig in 1978 to perform two pieces, ''Nijinsky (Fragments)'' from the diary of

Vaslav Nijinsky Vaslav (or Vatslav) Nijinsky (; rus, Вацлав Фомич Нижинский, Vatslav Fomich Nizhinsky, p=ˈvatsləf fɐˈmʲitɕ nʲɪˈʐɨnskʲɪj; pl, Wacław Niżyński, ; 12 March 1889/18908 April 1950) was a ballet dancer and choreog ...

with music by

Frederic Chopin Frederic may refer to: Places United States * Frederic, Wisconsin, a village in Polk County * Frederic Township, Michigan, a township in Crawford County ** Frederic, Michigan, an unincorporated community Other uses * Frederic (band), a Japanese r ...

and ''Bound Feet (Reformed)''. ''Frankie and Johnnie'' appeared in the 1981 documentary film ''Theater in Trance'' by

Rainer Werner Fassbinder Rainer Werner Fassbinder (; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement. Fassbinder's main ...

, who shot the film at the Theaters of the World Festival in June 1981 in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

. Geduldig directed himself and Tong in a production of ''Frankie and Johnnie'' at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in 1982.La MaMa Archives Digital Collections
"Production: ''Frankie and Johnnie'' (1982)". Accessed June 13, 2018.
/ref>

Musical career

Tong joined Tuxedomoon in 1977. He sporadically recorded and performed live with the group, and also recorded solo material including the

electropop Electropop is a hybrid music genre combining elements of electronic and pop genres. Writer Hollin Jones has described it as a variant of synth-pop with heavy emphasis on its electronic sound. The genre was developed in the 1980s and saw a re ...

dance album ''Theoretically Chinese'' in 1985, a 9-song album produced by

Alan Rankine Alan Rankine (17 May 1958 – 3 January 2023) was a Scottish musician and record producer best known as keyboardist and guitarist for rock band the Associates, which he co-founded with lead vocalist Billy Mackenzie in the late 1970s. Early l ...

featuring guests such as Stephen Morris of New Order,

Dave Formula Dave Formula (born David Tomlinson 11 August 1946, Whalley Range, Manchester, England), is an English keyboardist and film-soundtrack composer from Manchester, who played with the post-punk bands Magazine and Visage during the end of the 1970s ...

, and

Jah Wobble John Joseph Wardle (born 11 August 1958), known by the stage name Jah Wobble, is an English bass guitarist and singer. He became known to a wider audience as the original bass player in Public Image Ltd (PiL) in the late 1970s and early 1980s; ...

, as well as many other familiar musicians from Tong's past. The album and its subsequent singles, "Theoretical China" and "Reports From The Heart", were released on Les Disques du Crepuscule. His composition "In a Manner of Speaking" from 1985's ''

Holy Wars A religious war or a war of religion, sometimes also known as a holy war ( la, sanctum bellum), is a war which is primarily caused or justified by differences in religion. In the modern period, there are frequent debates over the extent to wh ...

'' was later covered by

Martin Gore Martin Lee Gore (born 23 July 1961) is an English songwriter, musician, singer, record producer and DJ. He is one of the founding members of the electronic rock band Depeche Mode and is the band's main songwriter. He is the band's guitarist a ...

Nouvelle Vague French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...

, and Amanda Palmer, and remains his best known song. Tong left Tuxedomoon in 1985. In March 2005, Tong reunited with Tuxedomoon for two performances in San Francisco, the first time they had performed together in over twenty years. Tong's career, including his solo work, is detailed in Isabelle Corbisier's 2008 book on Tuxedomoon, ''Music for Vagabonds – the Tuxedomoon Chronicles''.

Discography

With Tuxedomoon

* ''Joe Boy... The Electronic Ghost / Pinheads "O.T.M."'' (

7-inch In music, a single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record or an album. One can be released for sale to the public in a variety of formats. In most cases, a single is a song that is released separate ...

) 1978 * ''No Tears'' ( 12"-inch) 1978 * ''The Stranger / Love No Hope"'' (7-inch) 1979 * ''

Desire Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of aff ...

'' 1981 * ''Joeboy in Rotterdam / Joeboy San Francisco'' 1981 * ''Divine'' 1982 * ''Ninotchka / Again'' (12-inch) 1982 * ''Suite en Sous-Sol'' (2x12-inch) 1982 * ''Time to Lose/Blind'' (12-inch) 1982 * ''A Thousand Lives By Picture'' 1983 * ''Soma'' (7-inch) 1984 * ''Holy Wars'' 1985

Solo

* ''Stranger'' (7-inch) 1979 * ''Like The Others'' (7-inch) 1983, Les Disques Du Crepuscule * ''Theoretical China'' (12-inch with Niki Mono) 1984, Les Disques Du Crepuscule * ''Reports From The Heart'' 1985, Les Disques Du Crepuscule * ''Theoretically Chinese'' 1985, Les Disques Du Crepuscule * ''Broken English'' (remix; 12-inch; released in Italy) 1986 * ''Like The Others'' 1990 * ''Miserere'' 2003,

LTM Recordings LTM Recordings (originally les temps modernes) is a British independent record label founded in 1983, and best known for reissues of artists and music from 1978 to the present day, as well as modern classical and avant-garde composition. The l ...

* ''The Unperceived Image'' (ltd. 7-inch with

David J David John Haskins (born 24 April 1957, Northampton, Northamptonshire, England), better known as David J, is a British alternative rock musician, producer, and writer. He is the bassist for the gothic rock band Bauhaus and for Love and Rock ...

) 2007 * ''Theoretically Chinese'' (reissue on LTM Recordings) 2005

References

External links

Winston Tong's website

Winston Tong at Discogs.com

Winston Tong MP3s downloads

Tong's page on La MaMa Archives Digital Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tong, Winston 1951 births American puppeteers American people of Chinese descent Male actors from San Francisco American new wave musicians Living people Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts