Bio

Hailed as “inventive and breathtaking” by The New York Times, Fang Man is a Chinese-born American composer whose music unfolds between cultures, memory, and imagination. Rooted in Chinese literary and philosophical traditions and profoundly shaped by Western musical aesthetics—especially the coloristic refinement of the French repertoire—her work reveals a distinctive voice of lyrical intensity and textural subtlety. Educated in China, the United States, and Europe, she creates sound worlds that resonate across cultural landscapes while remaining deeply personal and poetic. Her artistic practice embraces interdisciplinary collaboration, engaging dance, visual arts, film, opera, and theatre.

Her music has been performed internationally by ensembles including the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Camerata Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Sinfonia Rotterdam, Basel Sinfonietta, Mannheimer Philharmoniker, Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, American Composers Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Minnesota Orchestra, Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, South Carolina Philharmonic, Aldeburgh Symphony Orchestra, USC Symphony Orchestra, Peabody Symphony Orchestra, Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound Ensemble, Prism Saxophone Quartet, Dolce Suono Ensemble, Ensemble UnitedBerlin, Radius Ensemble, Ensemble Échappé, Cassatt String Quartet, Music From China, among others. Whether intimate chamber works or expansive orchestral canvases, her compositions are marked by expressive nuance and a refined sensitivity to timbre and gesture.

With support from the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, her large-scale sheng (Chinese mouth organ) concerto "Song of the Flaming Phoenix" was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and the League of American Orchestras and premiered by sheng virtuoso Wu Wei under the baton of SFSO Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen during the 2021–2022 season. The work continues to find new resonance in subsequent performances, including the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra’s 2026–27 season. She has also served as composer-in-residence with the Mannheimer Philharmoniker, collaborating closely with director Boian Videnoff and the orchestra in performances and recordings of her orchestral works.

She is the recipient of a Charles Ives Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association Commission, Underwood/ACO Commission, Toru Takemitsu Award (Japan), Opera America Discovery Grant, National Endowment for the Arts Award, Siemens Berlin Music Foundation Commission, New Music USA Commission, 47th UWRF Commissioned Composer Award, Dolce Suono Ensemble Mahler–Schoenberg Project Commission, Prism Saxophone Quartet/Music From China Commission, USC Provost and Excel Grants, Bank of America Gallery Commission, Darmstadt Stipend Prize, SACEM Scholarship (France), South Carolina Arts Fellowship, Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, Frank Huntington Beebe Fellowship, Music From China Award, among others.

She has been invited to new music festivals such as the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Centre Acanthes(France); Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music, Festival Blurred Edges, Global Ear Festival, and Sinus~Ton Festival (Germany); Gaudeamus Music Week (the Netherlands); Cabrillo Festival, Aspen Music Festival, June in Buffalo, and Bowdoin International Music Festival (USA), among others. She has also served as a resident composer at the Hermitage Artist Retreat (Florida), Aldeburgh Music Centre (UK), and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (Italy).

Fang’s primary teachers include Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra at Cornell University, where she earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. She was selected to participate in the one-year Computer Music and Composition course at IRCAM (Paris), where she studied composition with Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Mikhail Malt, Yan Maresz, and Tristan Murail. She also studied with Richard Toensing and Michael Theodore at the University of Colorado Boulder. Before moving to the United States, she won first place in the national competition to enter the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she studied with Du Mingxin and Ye Xiaogang and earned a Bachelor of Music degree. Prior to her studies in Beijing, she studied with Cao Guangping at the Affiliated Middle School of the Guangzhou Conservatory of Music. She is currently a composition professor at the University of South Carolina (USA). Across continents and traditions, her music continues to explore the fragile, luminous space where sound becomes story.

Education

• Cornell University, Doctor of Musical Arts
• IRCAM - Centre Pompidou Paris, Certificate of Composition and Computer Music
• Cornell University, Master of Fine Arts
• Beijing Central Conservatory of Music, Bachelor of Music

Appointments

• University of South Carolina, Associate Professor of Music
• Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music, Composer-In-Residence/Assistant Professor
• Duke University, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music

Research Interests

• Opera and Theatre
• Computer-Assisted Music Composition and Analysis, Electro-Acoustic Music
• Orchestration
• Music and Visual Arts, Film Music
• Chinese Music and Chinese Instruments

Teaching

• MUS 726 the Music of Lutosławski
• MUS 724 Contemporary Styles
• MUS 315 Soundtracks and Scoring
• MUS 316 and 416: Music Composition I & II
• MUS 516, 716 and 816 Individual Composition
• SCHC 367/MUSC 726: Chinese Music and Instruments