World Music Center Distinguished Scholar Series
Friday, October 17, 2025
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Webinar
Chinary Ung’s creative work is primarily spurred on by dreams— some more real and grounded in his experience than others. Chinary examines a selection of his pieces through this framework, highlighting imagination and dreaming as a factor of continuity across his creative life journey. This journey culminates towards a grander dream of “a futuristic folk music” that unapologetically weaves the past, present and future of musical expression into singular works, exemplified by his latest pieces which combine for the first time in his career traditional Khmer ensembles with orchestral instruments. Our interpretation of time from the “dream-world” is better equipped to observe the musical forms that give rise to Chinary’s work, and Chinary draws from spiritual and philosophical ideas from across the world’s cultures to illustrate the cosmology of his musical universe.
Chinary Ung is often associated with that group of Asian-born composers whose music incorporates aspects of eastern musical characteristics into a western classical music setting. Aside from specific cultural and generational distinctions, the principal difference in Ung’s work is that for many years he was presented from engaging directly with the source of his cultural heritage as his native country was being town apart by the scourge of the Khmer Rouge. During this time, Ung took it upon himself to to rescue what he could of Cambodian musical traditions through performance and the compiling of recordings for release by Smithsonian Folkways. Though he is an astonishingly prolific composer and the first American to win the prestigious Grawenmeyer Award, his focus is rarely turned inward. His role as a cultural leader and educator demonstrates a profound sense of responsibility to a broader cultural and social context.
Journey through the dreams of a singularly unique composer, and find out how tradition and futuristic experimentation can coexist musically in this talk by Dr. Chinary Ung.
Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies, The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Ethnomusicology, UCLA World Music Center