"Genius" might not be enough to describe Filipino composer Jeffrey Ching.
A Harvard double magna cum laude and Cambridge University Honors graduate, Ching is described as the Philippines “most avant-garde composer” and whose works – over 240 of them - have yet to be matched.
“Drawing from his vast, acquired erudition, Asian orientation, audacity and incredible talent (call it genius) Ching, presumably, is also the country’s most imaginative, creative and innovative composer,” wrote Rosalinda Orasa in a column for the Philippine Star.
Ching, who has been based in Europe the past two decades, has won worldwide acclaim for his works. He has produced or composed over 240 works.
At the age of 23, he was recognized as one of the five outstanding young citizens of the year by the President of the Philippines, on the basis that his “works have expanded the scope and quality of Philippine musical literature.”
A few years later in 2003, he received the Jose Rizal Award for Excellence (in the category of Art, Literature and Culture) by the President of the Philippines and most recently, he was the composer of the critically acclaimed opera Das Waisenkind (The Orphan), which was awarded the Audience Prize (Zuschauerpreis) of the Erfurt Opera for the best opera production of 2009-2010.
For people who know and have observed Ching and his work, it’s no surprise that he has accomplished this much.
Born in Manila, Philippines to a Chinese family in 1965, he was drawn to classical music right away.
Ching began composing before the age of ten and was self-taught until the age of 17, according to his bio. At the age of 17, he composed his first publicly performed work, the cantata in Memory of a Great Man, “an ambitious setting of Shakespearean sonnets for solo soprano, tenor, bass, chorus and orchestra,” wrote a reporter for the Tulay Fortnightly, Chinese-Filipino Digest June 24, 2003 issue.
Ching went on to study music and Sinology at Harvard University. At Harvard, he received the John Harvard Scholarship for “academic achievements of the highest distinction“ twice, and the Harvard Detur Prize, the university’s oldest prize for academic excellence, according to his bio. He continued with his studies, going to England and studying law, philosophy, and composition at Cambridge and London Universities.
From 1987 to 1991, he taught music at the University of London, and was Lecturer-in-Music.
During the 1990’s, Ching represented the Philippines in three major cultural delegations to China - in 1990, 1993, and 1997. In 1990, he went to Beijing and premiered his ballet La Gitana with the Central Ballet of China. In 1993, he led the Philippine Music Delegation to China on a successful concert tour of his chamber music. On June 1997 he and a second Philippine Music Delegation, headed by National Artist Leonor Orosa Goquingco, toured China in performances of his cantata Rizal and his other works for vocal and chamber ensemble, the Tulay Fortnightly reports.
In 1998, the Philippine government commissioned him for a job for the centennial. The result of the commission was Symphony No. 3, Rituals, which he described as a work that “fuses Balinese gamelan, Chinese Ming, and Spanish Renaissance elements into a continuous forty-five-minute collage for three orchestras and male chanter.”
He said following this compositional breakthrough he broadened his field of cross-cultural investigation even further in a series of works that aimed to dissolve the conventional boundaries between East and West, ancient and modern.
Today, his compositions have been recognized and produced all over the world.
Many of his compositions have premiered in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia.
Last year, the Opera going public in Germany voted Ching’s opera Das Waisenkind (The Orphan) won the Zuschauerpreis or 'audience prize' in Erfurt, as the best opera production of the 2009-10 season.
Ching continues to be busy. In the next two years, he has several works lined up, one of them is for the 40th anniversary of the Hong Kong Arts Festival.
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Weekend Aug 27-30, 2011 Sec A pg. 10)
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