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Being thoughtful is part of the job

Be relevant is required

Community is the core of society

Born and raised in Vietnam (b.1962)

Live in the US since 1982

Naturalized US citizen

Assistant Professor of Music/Composition, Cleveland State University: 1993-96

Assistant Professor of Music/Composition-Theory, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana: 1996-99

Professor of Music/Composition, Indiana University - Jacobs School of music: 1999 - present

Vietnamese American Society for Creative Arts and Music

American Academy in Rome

ASCAP

Since 1976

2 years in ethomusicology

4 year in architecture

Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture (1978-82)

Riverside Community College (1982-83)

La Sierra University (1983-85)

BM in Music Composition - University of Southern California (1985-87)

MM in Music Composition - University of Michigan (1987-89)

MA in Ethnomusicology - University of Michigan (1991-93)

DMA in Music Composition - University of Michigan (1989-93)

Cross-culturalism through literatures, philosophies, and aesthetics 

Be relevant

P.Q. PHAN was born in 1962 in Vietnam. He became interested in music while studying architecture in 1978 and taught himself to play the piano, compose, and orchestrate. In 1982, he immigrated to The United States and began his formal musical training. He earned his BM from University of Southern California and his DMA in Composition from University of Michigan, where he also earned a second master’s degree in Ethnomusicology. 

Phan's music has been performed throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, in Europe (England, France, Austria, Italy, Holland, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Denmark, etc.,), Israel, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, and Japan. Mr. Phan has received numerous commissions, including from the Kronos Quartet, the American Composers Orchestra, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Greater East Lansing Symphony, Obscura Trio, Ensemble Alternance de Paris, Core Ensemble, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, etc. His works had been performed by the Kronos Quartet, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Radio France, Ensemble Moderne, the Cincinnati Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the St. Louis Orchestra - Chamber Group, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Charleston Symphony, the Greater East Lansing Symphony, the Sinfonia da Camera, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Society for New Music, etc. Phan has received a Rome Prize, the Rockefeller Foundation Grant, Meet the Composers: Music Alive Residency Award with the American Composers Orchestra, ASCAP Standard Awards, Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships, Charles Ives Center for American Music, the Concordia Orchestra, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony. He was guest composer at several music festivals, including Asian Music Week 2000, the ’99 Asian New Music Festival in Tokyo, the New Music Festival at Hamilton College (New York) in April '97 and April '99, the'96 residency with the Kronos Quartet at Univ. of Iowa - Hancher Auditorium, 1995 Asian Composers' Forum in Sendai - Japan, the '94 New Music Festival at UC Santa Barbara, the '92 Music Lives in Pittsburgh, etc. His recorded works include Tragedy at the Opera ("Kronos Quartet: 25 Years", Nonesuch 19504), Nights of Memory for solo guitar (Michael McCormick, Plaxton - CD001, L.A., 1992), and a new CD titled "Banana Trumpet Games" (includes Unexpected Desire, Banana Trumpets Games, My Language, Rough Trax, Beyond the Mountains, and Rock Blood) on CRI-CD849, and a recent CD of chamber music entitled From Perseus Cluster includes AC/DC, Movement, From Perseus Cluster, and Kaleidosonicon on IUMusic.

The premiere of his grand opera The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh by the IU Opera Production has been hailed as “The Tale of Lady Thi Kinh can be compared with a finely cut gemstone whose beauty reveals itself through the eye of the beholder.” “Phan’s The Tale of the Lady Thi Kinh at the IU Opera Theater is a creative, bold and largely successful grand opera.”  He recently completed A Vietnamese Requiem, a 35-minute large scale work for 4 vocal soloists, 8-part chorus and chamber orchestra, which employs Vietnamese Buddhist text. This work is dedicated to the approximate 10 million Vietnamese victims of wars in the 20th century. His most recent chamber opera What the Horse Eats on the Vietnam’s 1945 Great Famine to receive its premiere this August 2021.

A frequent guest composer and lecturer in Asia, PQ Phan is Professor of Music in Composition at Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University. He had taught at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and Cleveland State University.