Bun-Ching Lam Was born in the Macao region of China in 1954. She began studying piano at the age of seven and gave her first public solo recital at fifteen. In 1976, she received a B.A. degree in piano performance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She then accepted a scholarship from the University of California at San Diego, where she studied composition with Bernard Rands, Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and earned a Ph.D. in 1981. In the same year, she was invited to join the music faculty of the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where she taught until 1986. A winner of the Rome Prize (1991), Lam has also been awarded first prizes at the Aspen Music Festival, the Northwest Composer's Symposium, and the highest honor at the Shanghai Music Competition, which was the first international composers' contest to take place in China.
She has also been a recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, New York Foundation for the Arts, King County Arts Commission and Seattle Arts Commission. She was in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center. Most recently, she received a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council for a three -month study trip to Japan, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her current projects include the chamber opera "Wenji" supported by the International Collaborative Project of Meet the Composer, and commissions from Chamber Music America and the New Jersey Symphony. Ms. Lam's orchestral works have been performed by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, Women's Philharmonic, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Holland, and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. Her compositions have been featured in music festivals around the world such as the Bang on a Can (New York), New Music America (Los Angeles), Tokyo Summer Festival, Pacific Sounding (Japan), Hong Kong Arts Festival, ISCM World Music Days (Hong Kong), Steirische Herbst (Austria), and the 24 Heures Communication (Belgium). She was a composer in residence at the America Dance Festival, the Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East.
She is currently on the Board of Director for the American Composers Orchestra, and has served on the Advisory boards of the New York Foundation for the Arts, Composer's Forum and the Pauline Oliveros Foundation. In 1997, Bun-Ching Lam taught at Bennington College in the Spring Semester, and served as a Visiting Professor in Composition at the School of Music, Yale University in the Fall. She now lives and works in New York. Her music has been recorded on CRI, Tzadik, Nimbus, Koch International Classics, Sound Aspect and Tellus. Click here for a review of Bun-Ching Lam's "The Child God." Click here to listen to a bit of "I-7" on Bun-Ching Lam's CD ...Like Water from John Zorn's new music series on the Tzadik label. Performed by the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio of piano, violin and percussion.