Theresa Wong • 2022-2024
Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist, and vocalist actively exploring the intersection of music, creative experimentation, and the synergy of multiple disciplines. A second generation Chinese American raised in upstate New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, Wong studied classical piano and cello from an early age. Her interests expanded into design, leading her to Stanford University’s product design program, as well as the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and Fabrica, an experimental research center in Northern Italy. While living in Venice, Wong realized her vision to unite music with the inquisitive process of design, with the primary intention of finding transformation through performance. Upon returning to the United States, she completed an MFA at Mills College where her teachers included Fred Frith, Joan Jeanrenaud, Joëlle Léandre, Annie Gosfield, Alvin Curran and June Watanabe.
Embracing multiplicity, Wong’s artistic practice follows inquiries into song forms, improvisation, just intonation, and intermedia performance. Her works include In Stillness I Sing, commissioned by San Francisco Girls Chorus, As We Breathe, an installed song commissioned by Long Beach Opera for the 2020 Songbook, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill for The Future Is Female project, and Harbors, co-composed with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman and chosen as one of Wire’s top 50 releases of 2020. In 2022, Wong was the inaugural Sound/scapes artist at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, creating three site-specific performances inspired by artworks in the museum’s collection. Her multimedia piece The Unlearning (Tzadik), 21 songs inspired by Goya’s Disasters of War etchings, premiered in 2013 at Roulette in Brooklyn with visual projections by Daria Martin and Mao Mollona and was also featured in the 2016 New Frequencies Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. O Sleep, an improvised opera for an 8 piece ensemble exploring the conundrum of sleep and dream life, was presented at Southern Exposure in San Francisco in 2010. Recent commissions include works for NakedEye Ensemble, Jeff Anderle’s San Francisco Conservatory Clarinet Studio, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Splinter Reeds, Vajra Voices, and Del Sol Quartet.
In 2018, Wong founded fo’c’sle, a record label dedicated to adventurous music from the Bay Area and beyond, featuring inaugural releases by Ellen Fullman with David Gamper and Stuart Dempster, Chris Brown, powerdove, and Lijiang Quintet. She has shared her work internationally at venues including Cafe Oto and the Barbican Centre in London, Festival de Arte y Ópera Contemporánea in Morelia, Mexico, Fondation Cartier in Paris, Fabbrica Europa Festival in Florence, Sydney Festival, MONA FOMA Festival in lutrovita (Tasmania), and The Stone in New York City. Wong is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow and currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Julie Herndon • 2021-2023
Mouth (2022) written for the PWC
Premiered at 10th New Music for Treble Voices Festival on March 11, 2023
A sound as it leaves the mouth… This piece explores the idea that our words have lives of their own with which we may only intersect for a time. These intersections may alter the course and meaning of their life, in addition to changing our own. The metaphor of motherhood calls into question notions of ownership or authorship of these ephemeral, creative things. — Julie Herndon
When I came out
Of my mother’s mouth,
To anyone she knew,
I was only you.
She would look me in the eye
and use my name in her hair,
My name everywhere,
My name anywhere.
When I came out of
my mother’s gut,
to everyone we knew
We were only used.
I was only you/using time
She would look them in the eye
and use my name in her hair,
My name everywhere,
My name anywhere.
I forgot where I was going,
but I know more than I am showing.
Julie Herndon is a composer, performer, and sound artist based in California. Her work explores the body’s relationship to sound using tools like musical instruments and personal technologies.
Her work has been described as “truly brilliant and utterly affected” (Kulturpunkt), “blended to inhabit a surprisingly expressive space” (SFCV), and “like a signal from another world” (Tages-Anzeiger). Her compositions and installations have been presented at MATA Festival and National Sawdust in New York, Artistry Space in Singapore, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca (MACO) in Mexico, Music Biennale Zagreb (MBZ), Sogar Theater in Zurich, and by Forest Collective in Australia. Recent collaborations include the Decoder Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Kukuruz Quartet.
Julie is the recipient of the Elisabeth Crothers Award for Music Composition, American Composers Forum Bay Area Residency, and Georges Lurcy Fellowship. As an artist in residence, she has collaborated with institutions such as the Cité Internationale des Arts, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Center for Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at Berkeley, and Djerassi Artist Residency Program. She is currently composer in residence with the Peninsula Women’s Chorus and a curator at the San Francisco Center for New Music.
Beginning in the fall of 2022, Julie will be Assistant Professor of Music Technology and Composition at California Polytechnic State University. Previously, she has taught composition and electronic music production at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford. She holds a DMA from Stanford University, MA in Music Composition from Mills College, and BA from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her writing, Embodied Composition: Composing the Body with Sound, can be found in Leonardo with MIT Press.