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Angel Lam is a young composer who expresses detailed and refined emotions and attention to the beauty of soundscape and instrumentation in her music. Through musical poetry she conveys the memories and imageries that inspired her works. Her music is praised as "beautiful, even ravishing at moments", as well as "[a] kaleidoscopic outpouring". She blends the subtle and evocative expressiveness of an ancient form of East Asian aesthetic, to the power and perpetual energy coming from her western musical training. Her music ranges from the delicate depiction of a drop of water for an unconventional instrumentation--guitar, harp, vibraphone, crotales and double bass, to the telling of a forgotten hero from ancient China written for large orchestra and narration. She writes her own stories and proses that are an important part of her music. In her works, she continually seeks to retell the beauty she finds in everyday life.

Miss Lam grew up in Hong Kong/Los Angeles and is an active participant of music festivals worldwide since her days as an undergraduate. Her compositions have been performed throughout the United States and in many major cities around the world. Most recently, Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble toured with her composition Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain in the United States, Switzerland's Lucerne Festival, China and Japan. The work is released by Sony/BMG as a featured bonus CD in Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble's latest release "New Impossibilities"*. She is also a two-time winner of the Carnegie Hall emerging composer commission, where she worked with Grammy Awards winning composer Osvaldo Golijov and eminent vocalist Dawn Upshaw in 2006-07, and with Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Project in 2005-06. Through professional training workshops in collaboration with Young Concert Artists of the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, they culminated to two Carnegie Hall premiere of her new works in September 2006 and April 2007.

Her recent and upcoming collaborations include commissions from Hong Kong Sinfonietta and Australia's Grainger Quartet, Greenwich Village Orchestra in New York, Houston Chamber Choir in the American Masterworks Festival 2008, Orange County Women's Chorus in Los Angeles, Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest in Chicago, Peabody Dance in a new theater composition created under the guidance of renowned theater artist Martha Clarke, and a new composition written for Mr. Yo-Yo Ma and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to premiere in Atlanta and Carnegie Hall in 2009.

She is currently a Doctoral candidate at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory and an artist diploma candidate at Yale University under the Henry and Lucy Moses Full Scholarship. Her composition teachers are Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman and Christopher Theofanidis.

She received two Master degrees, in composition and music theory at the Peabody Conservatory, where she taught music theory to the Peabody undergraduates and designed three courses: "Classical Music Today: An analysis and Appreciation of Contemporary Classical Music", "The Romantic Composer" and "World Music, World Culture" for the Johns Hopkins University undergraduates during the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Intersession terms. Miss Lam began studying composition in high school at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, and later entered the Academy to begin her undergraduate studies in composition studying with Law Wing Fai, Clarence Mak (electronic music) and Lo Hau-Man. At the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, she researched in ancient Chinese aesthetics and Asian aesthetics in contemporary Western music. She received numerous awards and scholarships during her undergraduate studies to attend music festivals internationally, and a scholarship from the Liberal Arts Department lead by Prof. Betty Wei where she toured Europe studying the fine arts and architectures of European cities. To pursue her graduate studies, she received the honored Hong Kong Jockey Club Music and Dance Fund Scholarship, Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong Composition Scholarship for Overseas Studies, and Peabody Conservatory's Graduate Assistantship Full Tuition Award.

*exclusively sold at Barnes and Nobles
Honors and Awards: (show) (hide)
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Attended Masterclasses and Lesson with:
George Crumb, Poul Ruders, Christopher Rouse, George Tsontakis, Detlev Glanert, Ingram Marshall, James Primosch, Joel Hoffman, John Harbison, Brian Ferneyhough, Marc-Dalbavie
Scholarships and Grants: (show) (hide)
Higher resolution headshots:    Photo 1    Photo 2   (right click to download)

Contact the composer: compose (at) angellam.com