Yu-Hui Chang (photo credit: Sharona Jacobs)

Award-winning composer Yu-Hui Chang has written a wide range of music that compels and resonates with professional musicians and audiences alike. Her music is characterized by energy, precision, ingenious effects, and vibrant colors – all in the pursuit of a deep connection with humanity. She strives to break through cultural and stylistic boundaries, and to take an inclusive view of musical diversity. This attitude is manifested in the multifaceted quality of her compositional output, and the stylistic fluidity in her writing.

Yu-Hui was given the Arts and Letters Award and the Charles Ives Fellowship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, and Meet The Composer (now New Music USA). Additional honors include the Aaron Copland Award, Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize, and the Council for Cultural Affairs of the Executive Yuan (Taiwanese government agency, now Ministry of Culture.)

Performances of Yu-Hui’s compositions have taken places across continents in the Netherlands, Italy, UK, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and throughout the U.S. to critical acclaim by musicians and organizations such as the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, Nieuw Ensemble, NZTrio, ICE, Lydian String Quartet, and Alexander String Quartet. Among the numerous commissions she has received include those from the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, KlangForum Heidelberg, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Earplay, Volti, Boston Musica Viva, Alea III, Winsor Music, Ju Percussion Group, Monadnock Music Festival, Arts Council Korea, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, National Theater & Concert Hall of Taiwan, the 2003 Seoul International Festival of Women in Music Today, and many individual musicians.

A native of Taiwan, Yu-Hui began her intensive music training in piano, voice, and music theory at the age of six, and started seriously pursuing composition as a career at the age of fourteen. Following her graduation from the National Taiwan Normal University, she came to the United States in 1994 and received her graduate degrees from Boston University (M.M.) and Brandeis University (Ph.D.). After teaching at UC Davis for seven years, Yu-Hui moved back to the east coast and joined the Brandeis composition faculty in 2006.

Yu-Hui enjoys teaching and interacting with today’s young musicians. Beyond Brandeis, she was invited to be Guest Composer at the Composers Conference and the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, coaching many highly gifted and devoting young composers and performers. She was also featured in the Maurice Abravanel Visiting Distinguished Composer series at University of Utah, nienteForte Contemporary Music Festival at Tulane University, and a residency at Taipei National University of the Arts. Her music has appeared in the Asian Contemporary Music Festival in Seoul, Asian Music Festival in Tokyo, Innovation Series in Taipei, the Pacific Rim Music Festival at UC Santa Cruz, and the Festival of New American Music at California State University – Sacramento. In March 2006, Works and Process at the New York Guggenheim Museum presented three premieres of her works, highlighting Yu-Hui as a new talent of the younger generation.

In January 2024, Yu-Hui’s portrait CD “Mind Like Water” was released by New Focus Recordings. More of her music may be found in albums released by labels including Innova, Ravello, Azica, Centaur, and MSR Classics. She also appears as a conductor in composer Ross Bauer’s CD “Ritual Fragments” and as a pianist in a CD titled “Tribute to Chou Wen-chung”, both released by the Albany label. As an exponent of contemporary music performance, Yu-Hui previously served as a co-artistic director of Empyrean Ensemble and Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. Collectively she curated more than seventy concerts.