Lucia Hwong

Lucia Hwong is an American composer and instrumentalist. She has created music for theater, film, television, dance and the concert stage.

Biography Hwong was born in Hawaii and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her grandmother was a grande dame of Chinese opera and her mother is international actress Lisa Lu. Her first public performance was in concert, playing the pipa, an ancient Chinese lute, at the age of six. She studied ethnomusicology, theater and dance at UCLA and Columbia University from 1978 to 1982, graduating with a B.A. degree cum laude in ethnomusicology.

She has chaired philanthropic events for organizations including the Women's Project, American Theatre Wing, Asia Society and Parrish Art Museum and has been on committees such as Southampton Hospital.

She was married to investment banker Peter Gordon (1942–2020), with whom she had two daughters.

Compositions

Her music for theater includes the scores for the Tony Award-winning Broadway production of M. Butterfly and Tony-nominated Golden Child; as well as David Henry Hwang's New York Shakespeare Festival presentations of Sound and Beauty and The Dance and the Railroad and the Obie Award-winner FOB. She composed the music for Iago and Venus Voodoo at Lincoln Center.

Hwong also scored the Mark Taper and McCarter Theatre premieres of Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 and created a 12-tone fugue for Joyce Carol Oates' The Perfectionist. Among her dance scores, Fierce Attachments debuted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. She also scored Ali MacGraw's Yoga Mindbody and created music for the Guggenheim Museum's Soho video wall.

Her music for television and film include Hiroshima (NBC), Vietnam War Story (HBO), Forbidden Nights (Tiananmen Square massacre) (ABC), Paper Angels (Angel Island) (PBS), Jennifer's in Jail (girl gangs) (Lifetime), Lotus (women's emancipation in China) (AFI), Who Killed Vincent Chin? (racial murder) (1998 Oscar nomination: Best Documentary) and Silverlake Life: the View from Here (AIDS), honored with Sundance Film Festival and Peabody awards.

Concert pieces include The Unwelcome and Rhythm of Your Pulse, commissioned and performed by the Women's Philharmonic.

Her two albums, House of Sleeping Beauties and Secret Luminescence were released on the Private Music label. The Goddess Trilogy CDs of new-age music were released on her own label, Goddess Music, and received a Visionary Award in 2000.

Discography +TheaterYearProductionRoleNotes 1998Golden Child Composer, Incidental Music Broadway New York 1993Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 Composer, Arranger, Performer McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ The Perfectionist Twilight: Los Angeles, 1993 The Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles Music Center Snake in the Vein Blank Theatre Company, New York, NY The Perfectionist McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ 1992 The Big One Shot Composer, Performer Naked Angels Theatre, New York, NY 1989 Venus Voodoo Composer, Arranger, Performer Lincoln Center, New York, NYM. Butterfly Composer, Arranger Westbury Theatre, London 1988 M. Butterfly Composer, arranger, On-Stage Music Director O'Neill Theatre, Broadway New York 1983 Sound and Beauty Composer, Arranger, Performer New York Shakespeare Festival 1981 The Dance and the Railroad Composer, Music Director, Performer 1980 F.O.B. Iago Composer, Played Desdemona Mitzi Newhouse Theater - Lincoln Center (NY); 1979 Inner City Cultural Center (LA)

Recognition

In 1978, Hwong received a Citation of Outstanding Contribution by the Board of Public Works of the City of Los Angeles. Time magazine (September 1986) and The New York Times (May 1986) included her in a list of America's exceptional new composers; and in 1993, she received the first Asian American Arts award from the Asian American Arts Alliance as Artist of the Year.

Composer Philip Glass wrote, "a young generation of composers has begun to appear. And the thing which distinguishes them...is that they represent...dual tradition...perhaps really for the first time, or something new. Not a borrowing from one tradition or incorporating the sounds of another, but a real blending of Eastern and Western music. Lucia Hwong is such a composer."

Hwong is on the Board of The Women's Project and was honored at its Women of Achievement Awards on March 2, 2009. Mayor Bloomberg declared the day "Women's Project Day" by Proclamation. Lucia has chaired the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd Women's Project Galas.