Tonia Ko
Composer Tonia Ko 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 in 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. Her 2024-25 season includes 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 the Barlow Endowment, Chamber Music America, as well as the PRS and Hinrichsen Foundations in the UK. She has served as guest composer for many festivals, including the Composers Conference (USA), Windhoek at Hfm Trossingen (Germany), and Plurisons (Brazil). She was the 2015-17 Composer-in-Residence for Young Concert Artists in New York.
Ko’s 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. The bubble wrap concerto Breath, Contained III was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress for Contemporaneous, and subsequently performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Luxembourg Philharmonic, featuring Ko as soloist.
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 is currently Senior Lecturer in Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London.
