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Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Appoints Huang Ruo Composer in Residence, Generously Underwritten by June and Simon K.C. Li

Jan. 31, 2025

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) and Music Director Jaime Martín have announced the appointment of Huang Ruo as the orchestra’s Composer in Residence, generously underwritten by June and Simon K.C. Li, for a three-year tenure beginning in fall 2025 and concluding in spring 2028.

The Asian-American composer, celebrated for his vibrant and inventive musical voice, has been hailed for having “a distinctive style.” (The New York Times). Huang Ruo draws equal inspiration from ancient Chinese music, Chinese folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz. He integrates these disparate musical styles in a seamless, organic manner using a compositional technique that Huang Ruo calls “dimensionalism,” which melds space, time, sound, and integrates multi-cultural inspirations. 

“On behalf of everyone at Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, we are pleased to welcome Huang Ruo as our Composer in Residence,” says Martín. “A singular artist, Ruo creates compelling genre-spanning work. We look forward to collaborating with him on exciting new musical frontiers.”

Huang Ruo says, “What drew me to want to become part of the LACO Family, is its excellency, innovation, and openness to new ideas and inspirations from other cultures.”

During his tenure, Huang Ruo will compose for LACO a new chamber symphony, which will be premiered at Colburn School’s Kohl Hall in the 2027/2028 season, the third and final year of his residency when LACO is slated to make its highly anticipated permanent move into the downtown LA venue, currently under construction. Huang Ruo will spend the years leading up to that getting to know the orchestra, serving in a curatorial role as part of the artistic leadership team, and stewarding LACO Sound Investment, a groundbreaking program the orchestra established in 2001 that engages audience members in the support of developing of new classical works. He will also curate LACO’s 2026/2027 CURRENT series, musical programs that take a deep dive into specific themes and are performed in non-traditional venues. Huang Ruo will serve as an advisor to LACO’s teaching artists and participate in a range of panels and community outreach programs as well.

In addition, LACO will present some of Huang Ruo's existing works during his residency, including, in March 2026, as part of its 2025/26 Season, his gripping climate crisis symphony Tipping Point, co-commissioned by the orchestra. Inspired specifically by the wildfires that have raged in Hawaii and California in recent years, the 21-minute work emphasizes nature’s beauty and the urgent need to protect the environment from climate change. The other co-commissioners include Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra, and China NCPA Orchestra. Tipping Point was premiered by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in February 2023.

During the current 2024/25 season, as LACO’s Composer in Residence Designate, Huang Ruo is serving in an advisory capacity with a particular focus on helping LACO to identify living composers and other contemporary artists for the orchestral collaborations. 

About Huang Ruo

Huang Ruo’s diverse range of cross-genre compositions encompasses works for orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, dance, sound installation, multi-media, conceptional public art, and film. His oeuvre includes the staged oratorio Angel Island, addressing the suffering of Chinese detainees at the California immigration center in the early 1900s; and City of Floating Sounds, which incorporates a phone app to bring people into the concert hall, à la the Pied Piper. He has composed nine operas, among them for M Butterfly, a groundbreaking adaptation of Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, featuring a libretto by David Henry Hwang, The Book of Mountains and Seas, drawn from a compilation of classic Chinese mythology, and An American Soldier, based on the true story of Chinese-American Army Pvt. Danny Chen, found dead in a guard tower at his base in Afghanistan.

Huang Ruo’s music has been premiered and performed by orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic, ensembles and quartets such as Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Remix Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, and Ethel Quartet, and conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon, Marin Alsop, Dennis Russell Davies, Ed Spanjaard, Peter Rundel, Alexander Liebreich, Xian Zhang, and Ilan Volkov.

Huang Ruo’s opera Dr. Sun Yat-Sen had its American premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in 2014. His opera Paradise Interrupted received its world premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2015 and was performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2016, before going on tour to Asia and Europe. In addition, his works have been presented at Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, and Opera Hong Kong.

Huang Ruo was the first composer-in-residence of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He is also in residence at the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. He received the prestigious Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in 2024, given to risk-taking artists working in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theater, and the visual arts. 

Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976 – the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. His father, who is also a composer, began teaching him composition and piano when he was six years old. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was opening its gates to the Western world, he received both traditional and Western education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. As a result of the dramatic cultural and economic changes in China following the Cultural Revolution, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. Huang Ruo was able to absorb all of these newly allowed Western influences equally.

After winning the Henry Mancini Award at the 1995 International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland, Huang Ruo moved to the United States to further his education. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in composition from the Juilliard School. Huang Ruo is currently on the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music at the New School in New York City. He is the artistic director and conductor of Ensemble FIRE (Future In REverse). His music is published by Schott Music. 

Huang Ruo joins a prestigious lineage of composers affiliated with LACO, including Derek Bermel, Juan Pablo Contreras, Uri Caine, Kenneth Frazelle, Pierre Jalbert, Andrew Norman, Derrick Skye, and Ellen Reid, among others.

To learn more about Huang Ruo, visit schott-music.com.

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