(This composer has multiple commissions - click here to view all)

Title: Apmonia
Commission: 2003
Completed: 2004
Instrumentation: chamber orchestra
Premiere Location: Sanders Theatre, Harvard University
Premiere Ensemble: Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra
Notes: Dedicated to Bernard Rands at 70.

A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer/vocalist/sound artist who is currently a Professor at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Professorship in Music. Ensembles and performers who have championed Ken’s music include Kim Kashkashian, Robyn Schulkowsky, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, BMOP, Vincent Daoud, Philippe Brunet, Alarm Will Sound, Steve Schick and SFCMP, and Frances-Marie Uitti. Ken’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, was featured in their repertoire for over ten years. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001–2003 seasons. As a vocalist, Ken specializes in extended techniques (overtones, throat-singing, multiphonics, extreme registers, circular singing) and has performed as soloist in his vocal concerto with orchestras in Boston, New York, Warsaw, Vilnius, Bangkok, Sacramento, Stony Brook, Pittsburgh, and North Carolina. His sound installations have been featured at MUAC (Mexico City), Beijing, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Shenzhen Bienniale, and Art Basel. Ken holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A monograph CD of three orchestral concertos was released on the Bmop/sound label. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music.