Composer Tonia Ko creates work that is whimsical, questioning, and lyrical. She has collaborated with leading musicians across a variety of media—from acoustic concert pieces to improvisatory works with electronics. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, she has developed an international profile with pieces performed across the USA, Europe, and Asia.
Recent projects include Her Land, Expanded, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and American Composers Orchestra, and Surge Out commissioned by the eavesdropping festival in London for pianist Eliza McCarthy. The 2024-25 season included premieres at Non-Piano Toy Piano Weekend in Hamburg and Brooklyn Art Song Society. Recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, Ko has received grants from Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress, Chamber Music America, as well as PRS and Hinrichsen Foundations in the UK. She served as 2015-17 Composer-in-Residence for Young Concert Artists in New York.
Her creative practice follows aural, visual, and tactile instincts in a holistic way, most prominently in “Breath, Contained”, an ongoing project using bubble wrap as a musical instrument. As a free improviser on her unique instrument, she has performed at Cafe OTO, Hundred Years Gallery, and Chicago Ear Taxi Festival. She has performed her bubble wrap concerto, Breath, Contained III with Contemporaneous, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Luxembourg Philharmonic.
Ko earned a doctorate from Cornell University, and her artistic development was further enriched by studies at Tanglewood Music Center and Royaumont Académie Voix Nouvelles. She previously served as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Contemporary Composition at the University of Chicago and is currently Senior Lecturer in Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Contributions to Humans & Nature Press:
- Invitation to Listen: The Poetry of Plain, Air (Book coming soon at Human & Nature Shop)
