Composer
ABOUT
Photo by Sofia Ouyang
Darren is a Chinese Canadian composer who is currently based in Vancouver. He enjoys writing music for concerts, films, and cross-disciplinary collaborations. He has had the opportunity to work with various ensembles, including Standing Wave, Piano-Erhu Project (PEP), Trio Immersio, and Rose Geller String Quartet. Darren's first orchestral composition, To Liberate, will be premiered by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra at the Winnipeg New Music Festival in January 2023. With the help of Soundstreams’ RBC Bridges Program, his most recent piece Into the Wilderness – an Open Conversation was performed by TorQ Percussion Quartet in Toronto in October 2022.
Darren’s collaborations with the Musqueam artist Debra Sparrow culminated in performances of his music as parts of installations and showcase 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 began studying piano at age 5 and began composing at the age of 19. He enjoys teaching piano as well as music theory, and is currently a teaching assistant of aural skills at UBC School of Music. Having spent his childhood in Guangzhou China and Vancouver Canada, Darren is inspired by the different languages he came across. He is currently conducting research on how Cantonese and Québécois French can inform composition and orchestraion with Louis-Michel Tougas and the help of the Collaborative Student Grant from the ACTOR Project. He received a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Music from UBC, where he is currently pursuing his Master of Music in Composition.