MELISSA HUI  

Melissa Hui was born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She received an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts and a D.M.A. from Yale University. She has been mentored by Jacob Druckman, Earl Kim and Mel Powell. Her commissions include works for the Oregon, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and National Arts Centre orchestras; Ensemble Antipodes (Switzerland), New Millennium Ensemble (NYC), and the St. Lawrence String Quartet; a soundtrack for the Academy Award-nominated NFB film, Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square; and an opera, Pimooteewin (The Journey), based on a Cree myth and sung in the aboriginal language. Significant performances include the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, International Gaudeamus Music Week (Amsterdam), ISCM Festivals (Croatia, Switzerland), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. She is a founding member of the Common Sense Composers Collective. Recordings of her works have been released on CRI, UMMUS, Santa Fe New Music, Nisapa and Centredisc. The recipient of awards from the Guggenheim and Fromm Foundations, she moved to Montreal in 2004 after ten years on the composition faculty of Stanford University.