Composer

Darren enjoys writing music for acoustic instruments, electronics, films, dance, and other cross-disciplinary collaborations. Recently selected as a NextGen Composer by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, he is commissioned for an orchestral premiere in November 2025. Darren has had the opportunity to work with various collaborators, including Standing Wave, the Wallace Collection, the English National Ballet School, Barcelona Modern Ensemble, Roadrunner Trio, TorQ Percussion Quartet, Piano-Erhu Project (PEP), Trio Immersio, Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra, and members of Divertimento Ensemble and Prague Modern.

 

Recent collaborations include solo performances by Riccardo Acciarino, Aleksander Gabrys, Malin Sieberns, and Anna Stavelova at Divertimento Ensemble Rondò 2024 (Italy), Novalis Festival (Croatia), Festival Mixtur (Spain), and Echofluxx 24 (Czechia), respectively. His first orchestral composition, To Liberate, was premiered by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra at the Winnipeg New Music Festival in January 2023, and was subsequently read by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. His piano trio, with love, I will get to you, was premiered by Trio Immersio at the Iceberg Institute in Vienna, and later performed at the Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver. The subsequent edition of the festival saw the premiere of Darren’s saxophone quartet, Whirlwind, by Saxophilia, and it was later performed again at the St. Petersburg International New Music Festival by SeVer Saxophone Quartet. In 2022 Darren was an RBC Bridges Soundstreams Composer. Recently he was a Sandbox Composer at the Three Choirs Festival's New Voices Academy. 

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As a member of the ACTOR Project, Darren’s ensemble piece, Prayers and Curses, was premiered at the CORE Project Concert at McGill University by the Composer-Performer Orchestration Research Ensemble. Having developed a recent interest in electronic music, a number his multimedia pieces for electronics, visuals, and dancers were premiered at the Bang! Festival at the University of British Columbia in 2023. Darren’s graphic scores have been featured at the Telus Studio Centre and the Belkin Art Gallery.

 

Darren’s collaborations with the Musqueam artist Debra Sparrow culminated in performances of his music as parts of installations that showcased Debra’s Salish weavings, which took place at venues across Vancouver, such as the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Christ Church Cathedral, and the Vancouver International Airport. His film score, Stargazer, was awarded Best Score by New York Film Awards in November 2018. 

 

Darren enjoys teaching piano as well as music theory, and was an instructor of aural skills at UBC School of Music. Having spent his childhood in Guangzhou China, Darren is inspired by the melodious language of Cantonese, and he has conducted research on the language and its relationship with music with the help of the Collaborative Student Grant from the ACTOR Project. He received a Bachelor of Commerce, Bachelor of Music, and a Master of Music from UBC.