ALAN CHAN
Doctoral Candidate (University of Southern California)
Master of Music (University
of Missouri - Kansas City)
Bachelor of Music
(University of Miami)
Licentiate in Piano Performance (Trinity College, London , UK)
composer, conductor, accompanist, music copyist
Culver City, California / Brooklyn, New York
Alan Chan¡¦s music has been recognized with honors from ASCAP, Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI), the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong (CASH), among others. His works have been performed in music festivals such as June in Buffalo, Imagine Festival, Musica Danubiana (Slovenia), International Jazz Composers¡¦ Symposium and various SCI conferences. His first percussion ensemble piece, metal¡Kstone¡Kbeing¡Kcracked (2001/02) has received performances more than ten times in the United States and in Europe.
His personal connection with musics around the globe, such as music from Bali, China, Japan and American Jazz has prompted him to incorporate those styles into his music, and even compose for those genres. In the fall of 2008, he became a member of the prestigious BMI Jazz Composers Workshop in New York City, to forge his craft on Jazz big band writing. In recent years, he has received commissions from organizations of different musical genres, include musical songs A Spirit¡¦s Dream and A Beautiful Rebirth (Ho Wen-Hsiung and Lin-lin Chang Bel Canto Theatre, Taiwan), Acala and Bitter Melon for Chinese instruments (Melody of China, San Francisco), Qin for soprano and percussion (the Snell Duo, Kansas City), Duo for violin and cello (Arts and Culture Development Fund, Hong Kong) and Sweet Bach (Lien Percussion Ensemble, Taiwan).
In 1999, he entered a one-year Vienna exchange program to study at the Universitat fur Musik und Darstellen Kunst Wien with Michael Jarrell. His mentors also include Marc-Andre Dalbavie (IRCAM summer course 2001), Toshio Hosokawa (Darmstadt summer course 2002), John Van der Slice (University of Miami), James Mobberley, Chen Yi (UMKC), Vince Mendoza and Shelly Berg (USC). He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California, under the direction of Donald Crockett. His percussion works are published solely by HoneyRock Publishing (honeyrock.net).
Chan has written pieces for orchestra, various chamber combinations, electronics and Jazz big band. He has also received commissions to write music and to perform improvisations on the piano for several theater and film productions. Edward Lam Dance Theater has presented his music for Les Parents Terribles and Far from the Madding Crowd in Hong Kong. In the U.S., his music for theater has included Yesterday Once More (New York University, 1998) and the multimedia theatre work Open (Lehigh University, 2000). He has engraved and edited music by renowned composers such as Chen Yi.