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please email: baldwingiang@gmail.com]
“Baldwin Giang is an expressive and politically-minded artist creating harmonically driven and finely weaved works with exceptional craft and a keen attention to detail” (Gaudeamus)
Baldwin Giang (b. 1992) is an internationally-performed composer, pianist, interdisciplinary creator, and educator whose music aims to empower communities of audiences and performers by creating concert experiences that are opportunities for collective wonder and judgment. He currently serves as composer-in-residence with the Louisville Orchestra from 2024-2025. Baldwin won the Samuel Barber
Rome Prize and was in residence as a fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 2023-2024. He was a nominee/finalist for the 2022 Gaudeamus Award, the most prestigious international prize for composers under 35. Described as "taut and cohesive...challenging and rewarding" (Cacophony), Baldwin's music has been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Symphony Center in Chicago, Smithsonian National Museum, and Chateau de Fontainebleau. He has received commissions from the National Sawdust Ensemble, Metropolis Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Loadbang, Extended Music Collective, Playground Ensemble, Grossman Ensemble, Fondation Maurice Ravel, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Robert Black Foundation, Music in Bloom, How It’s Musically Made, and Music from Copland House. Additionally, he is lucky to have collaborated with such celebrated performers as the New Jersey Symphony, Albany Symphony, Ensemble Intercontemporain, International Contemporary Ensemble, New European Ensemble, Riot Ensemble, Ensemble Garage, Argento Ensemble, [Switch~ Ensemble], orkest de ereprijs, Ensemble MotoContrario, Arditti Quartet, Spektral Quartet, JACK Quartet, Longleash, Sandbox Percussion, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, Quince Vocal Ensemble, Rage Thormbones, So Much Hot Air, unassisted fold, Ensemble But What About, Metallicum, ChamberQUEER, Verdant Vibes, AEPEX Contemporary Performance, Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Yale Symphony Orchestra, University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theatre of Yale College, Indiana University’s New Music Ensemble, University of Michigan’s Contemporary Directions Ensemble, University of Iowa’s Center for New Music Ensemble, University of North Texas's Nova Ensemble, and members of Ensemble Dal Niente and Mocrep.
Among the international and domestic festivals that have presented his work are: IRCAM’s Manifeste (France), Ecoles d'arts Americaines de Fontainebleau (France), Concours International de Piano d’Orleans (France), Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Netherlands), 24th Annual Young Composers' Meeting (Netherlands), Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi (Italy), highSCORE (Italy), Festival Contrasti (Italy), Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), Valencia International Performance Academy (Spain), Aspen Music Festival, New Jersey Symphony’s Edward T. Cone Institute at Princeton, Yale in Norfolk’s New Music Workshop, CULTIVATE at Copland House, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Albany Symphony’s American Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, June in Buffalo, New Music on the Point, NUNC!3, National Sawdust’s Digital Discovery Festival, Atlantic Music Festival, Midwest Graduate Music Consortium, Midwest Composers’ Symposium, SCI National Student Conference, North American Saxophone Association Conference, and NSEME.
Baldwin is a graduate of Yale University, earning a B.A. with Honors in both Music and Political Science, and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, earning a M.A. as a Regents Fellow. At Yale, Baldwin earned the Beekman Cannon Friends Prize awarded for the best senior musical composition, and the Abraham Beekman Cox Prize awarded to the “most promising and gifted composer” in his class. Additionally, Baldwin completed a 2022-2023 Fulbright artist Fellowship in Taiwan, where he studied pipa performance at the National Taipei University of the Arts. His composition roses for sinfonietta won a 2022 ASCAP Morton Gould Award as well as the the Leo Kaplan Award for the top piece submitted out of 500+ entries that year. As the first prize winner of the 2022 Loadbang Commission Competition, he received a commission for a new work to be premiered and recorded by the Loadbang Ensemble in New York City in 2024. Selected out of 400 entries, his work memory is a trance won first prize in the 2020-2021 Musica Prospettiva Competition, earning a cash prize and multiple performances of the work in Siena, Italy. As a winner of the New York Youth Symphony's First Music Prize, Baldwin won a commission for a new work premiered in Carnegie Hall in May 2019. As a winner of the Prix Ravel, he won a cash prize and commission performed by members of Ensemble Intercontemporain and the faculty of the Ecole d’arts Americaines at the Chateau de Fontainebleau in July 2019. He is also a laureate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Civic Orchestra Composers Project, commissioned to write a piece that was premiered at Chicago's Symphony Center. His music has been published by PARMA as a winner of their composer competition. Other recognition has come from the Michigan Music Teacher’s Association, and the University of Pennsylvania's David Halstead Prize.
Baldwin is currently a PhD candidate and Division of Humanities Fellow at the University of Chicago where he studies with Augusta Read Thomas, Sam Pluta, Anthony Cheung, Hans Thomalla, Courtney Bryan, and Felipe Lara. His past teachers have included Christopher Theofanidis, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, Kathryn Alexander, Konrad Kaczmarek, Michael Klingbeil, James Primosch, Anna Weesner, James Matheson, and Stephen Gorbos. Additional studies and masterclasses with Hans Abrahamsen, Tristan Murail, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey, Misato Mochizuki, Derek Bermel, Simon Steen-Andersen, Stefano Gervasoni, Allain Gaussin, Francois Paris, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, Yehudi Wyner, Tania Leon, Kate Soper, Matana Roberts, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir. Recent and upcoming projects in 2024-2025 include PIPA BOY for pipa, ensemble, and video, and three new orchestral works for the Louisville Orchestra, conducted by Teddy Abrams.
