POUNCEY

Viet Cuong (b. 1990) is an award-winning Vietnamese-American composer whose eclectic sound has been described as “alluring” and “wildly inventive” by The New York Times.1 The composer’s catalog includes works for wind ensemble, orchestra, chamber ensemble, solo, vocal, and electronic music. In November 2022, I conducted an interview as part of the research for my master’s thesis pertaining to orchestration techniques used in Cuong’s wind band music. The interview’s entirety has been condensed and optimized to offer a resource for the preparation and performance of the composer’s music as the content of the conversation provides insight into the life, career, and compositional process of Viet Cuong.

Introduction

Viet Cuong is an award-winning Vietnamese-American composer whose music has been commissioned and performed on six continents by internationally acclaimed ensembles, such as the New York Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird (Chicago, Illinois), the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (St. Paul, Minnesota), the Atlanta Symphony, the United States Navy Band (Washington, D.C.), and the Dallas Winds, among many others. International performances include those by the Queensland Wind Orchestra (Brisbane, Australia), the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore), and ensembles in Canada, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, and Japan. With an eclectic sound described as “alluring” and “wildly inventive” by The New York Times, Cuong is lauded as a leading contemporary composer and has amassed numerous accolades, including the Walter Beeler Memorial Compositional Prize presented by Ithaca College, the Theodore Presser Foundation Award, the ASCAP Morton Gould Composers Award, and the 2023 ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize for Vital Sines (2022). Cuong served as a mentor for the 2022 National Band Association’s Young ComposerConductor Mentor Project, hosted by the United Stated Air Force Band (Washington, D.C.), and was selected as a mentee participant for the project in 2010. Currently an Assistant

Benjamin Pouncey is a graduate assistant pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in wind conducting from the University of South Carolina. Mr. Pouncey earned the Master of Music degree in wind conducting from Colorado State University and the Bachelor of Music degree in music education from the University of South Carolina. He was a middle and high school band director for eight years in Dorchester School District Two (Summerville, SC).

Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Cuong earned degrees in music composition from Princeton University (M.F.A./PhD), the Curtis Institute of Music (Artist Diploma), and the Peabody Conservatory (B.M../ M.M.).

Cuong was born on September 8, 1990 in the west San Fernando Valley suburb of West Hills, California. Beginning piano lessons at the age of five sparked an early interest in music and his fascination continued when Cuong’s family ultimately relocated to Marietta, Georgia. His piano experience provided a natural bridge to mallet keyboard instruments when Cuong joined band in middle school and he continued as a percussionist in the renowned Lassiter High School Band. Cuong took an early, explorative initiative in creating his own music. Later learning to play clarinet broadened the horizon for the young composer and established a knowledge base that, when paired with the support of his teachers, lit the flame of his renowned career.

On Monday, November 14, 2022, I had the honor of interviewing Viet Cuong as part of the research for my master’s thesis pertaining to orchestration techniques used in Cuong’s wind band music. The topics included biographical information, the composer’s compositional process and philosophy, as well as the significance of composer-conductor collaboration. The excerpts that follow are from our conversation.

Biographical

The following questions pertain to the composer’s life, education, and musical influences.

pieces were you writing? Were they full band works or were they compositions for small ensembles?

Viet Cuong: It was a combination of things. I got my start from trying to write music that was similar to what we were playing in middle school. When I got to high school, it was mostly a continuation of that. I remember my freshman year of high school, the associate director at Lassiter named Catharine Bushman—it was Catharine Sinon at the time, so Ms. Sinon—gave me one of her downloads of Finale that she won at a raffle while attending the Midwest Clinic. That was a big moment because what I was using when I first started was Finale Notepad, and I think at the time you could only use up to seven instruments. Then towards the end of middle school I got what was called Finale Printmusic, which allowed you to use maybe up to twenty instruments. After I received the full version of Finale, that allowed me to have an entire band score and I never reached the max number of instruments possible. I would say that's when I started to actually write full band pieces, my freshman year of high school.

pieces that were “marching bandesque.” An example of this being, oftentimes in Lassiter’s marching band shows the closer would have a woodwind fugue, and that's where I learned what a fugue was—I never learned what a fugue was from Bach or anything. (laughs) I would write these woodwind fugues and they often had this marching band sound to them. I was also inspired by the original source material of the marching band arrangements we performed. My freshman year our show included music by David Holsinger, which led me to write pieces that were similar to Holsinger. Then in the spring I would write pieces inspired by what we were playing in concert band. I was also in percussion ensemble in high school and our percussion ensemble was really good—in fact, we performed at the Midwest Clinic my sophomore year. We played David Gillingham’s Stained Glass, which is a big percussion ensemble piece, and I remember writing a piece for a mallet percussion ensemble that was similar to Stained Glass

When you were a young band student beginning to explore composition, what type of

They were mostly in the style of whatever I was playing in band, so in the fall I would write these

I also wrote some chamber pieces for my friends. I wrote a woodwind quintet, and a string quintet, because I didn’t know that a string quintet was unusual. (laughs) I figured, of course it would include string bass! (laughs) I also wrote arrangements of piano music for my friends to play on mallet instruments in our percussion ensemble—I remember writing some Chopin and Rachmaninoff arrangements. I also wrote a vibraphone trio arrangement of the Morten Lauridsen O Magnum Mysterium because we were playing that my junior year in concert band. Everything I did was directly tied to what the Lassiter band program was doing.

When you were applying to undergraduate music programs, what really drew you to the Peabody Conservatory?

Viet Cuong: I didn’t know what Peabody was until the summer before my senior year. There is something called the Georgia Governor's Honors Program (GHP), and it is basically a summer program available to high school students throughout Georgia. You could audition and interview for whatever program you choose and it acted as a small preview of college, if you will. I was a percussion major there and we had different classes each week. One day we attended a twenty-first century music class and I remember our percussion teacher, Ryan Smith, would play music for us. This was my first experience hearing the music of George Crumb. He also played an orchestra piece titled Rainbow Body by a composer named Christopher Theofanidis. I loved it and I still love that piece. I remember getting chills listening to it. I was so inspired that I Googled Christopher Theofanidis and read that he taught at a music school in Baltimore called Peabody. I looked further into it and Peabody ended up on my list of schools for that reason.

There were other schools on that list as well. I remember applying to USC (University of Southern California) and Michigan because I knew they had good band programs, and I was very inspired by Frank Ticheli and Michael Daugherty’s music. We had previously sight-read Daugherty's Niagara Falls in band so there were other schools I applied to that were tied to the music and composers we learned about in band at Lassiter. Peabody was different, however, because it was discovered in this place outside of Lassiter. Ultimately, I decided to go to Peabody because everything in my musical life had been so band focused, I thought I probably should try to do something outside of that. By going to a music conservatory like Peabody the emphasis generally surrounded the orchestra and opera program— there is a wind ensemble but it's not the focus—so it was good for me to branch out.

Viet Cuong: My roommate my freshman year was a violinist, and I remember learning about the violin the first week of school. Prior to this I didn't even know what the open strings of a violin were. (laughs) As I mentioned, I wrote a string quintet in high school and it was not good. It showed no understanding of string instruments, or bowing, or anything like that. Talking to my roommate about violin, string writing, and things like harmonics was so mind-blowing. In addition, one of my best friends, who was also a violinist, lived right next door to us. Being around people who came from a different musical background and who played different repertoire was so amazing. When I think back to my best friends in college, many of them were string players, guitarists, and percussionists— some were also woodwind players and brass players—so it was a good mix. When you’re in music school, everyone's conversations are about the repertoire they’re working on and what the orchestra is rehearsing. I remember going to orchestra concerts to support my friends and hearing music I had never heard before. That opened up my world to so many other things that I could try to write.

Do you recall experiences as a composition student that were turning points or that really influenced your musical outlook?

Regarding your teachers and mentors, are there characteristics of your writing that you attribute to a particular person’s influence?

Viet Cuong: I have always been inspired by my teacher's musical voices and the pieces they write— that includes the risks they take, and the risks they don't take—along with the things they’ve learned through all of their experiences. I think as a composer-teacher that's what you teach—your learned experience—and you help students navigate those things themselves. For me, I always found Kevin Puts, in particular, to be a guiding light because I think his music is in a similar world to mine. Nowadays, as a composer, you can really write whatever you want and it's really exciting for that reason. Maybe fifteen years ago, however, in some ways I felt pressure to write music that wasn't necessarily true to myself, in order to be taken seriously. But I always remember, no matter what, Kevin would write, and continues to write, whatever music that is really honest and sincere to him, and he's massively successful. That inspired me to do the same and stay honest to who I am. I would say that's true of every teacher that I studied with. They are all really confident musical voices, and even though Oscar Bettison’s music is very different from Kevin’s he has the same confidence in his voice. Oscar also really helped me to think outside of the box. That was great to study for a year with him at Peabody. Every teacher I have had has influenced me in a different way and I owe a lot to them.

How has your experience been thus far as a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas?

Viet Cuong: It's been really rejuvenating to have my teaching be part of my musical life and to feel like I am useful in ways other than just as a composer, (chuckles) in terms of what I have to offer the world musically. I think when you're freelancing as a composer, like I was doing for years before beginning this role, a lot of your self-worth is tied up in your composition career—what kind of commissions you're getting and how many performances you're getting—and it can be overwhelming at times. I feel much more as though I have a balanced outlook on life. I still want to have all these things happening in my career outside of teaching, but I have really enjoyed teaching as a grounding force in my life now.

Is there anything in your teaching experience that has reinforced or changed how you approach composition?

Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé for my orchestration class last year, which is a piece I love, and a piece I feel is something everyone who teaches orchestration tends to introduce. My mind was blown the first time I heard the piece in college. When I played it for my students, however, some of the them were just not into it. (chuckles) It seems as though, and I'm generalizing here, people in my generation love these really textural pieces—music that’s really focused on color and timbre and shifts in texture. More recently, I've noticed younger students in college are really into counterpoint and more structured ways of making music. It's just been interesting to witness. In that way, teaching is a nice way of keeping you on your toes and connected to what's happening.

Do you have any ideas where that comes from [younger students’ musical interests]?

Viet Cuong: Even with a separation of ten or fifteen years, it's interesting to see what different generations enjoy about music. I remember playing Maurice

Viet Cuong: I’m not sure, I think it's just the pendulum swinging. If a lot of composers are interested in one thing then interests eventually shift because we're trying to find fresh ways to approach writing music. Once a lot of composers have exhausted one avenue you typically explore a different one. It’s what keeps music interesting and why music has evolved over hundreds of years. This semester I’m teaching a graduate Baroque seminar class and we cover many notable composers of the Baroque era. It’s really interesting to hear Baroque era composers write within these similar styles and forms, using the same instruments, for the most part, and similar chords—yet everyone has their own distinct musical style. Scarlatti, for example, is so vastly different than Bach. It's also interesting that the pendulum completely swung in a different direction for the Classical era. What people valued and what people wanted to hear was so different. It's fascinating to compare Bach to Mozart—two composers that are really iconic, but so very different. I think music just does that every so often and I think changes and shifts now happen more quickly because music is so accessible.

You have mentioned before that you have traversed stages in your compositional career2. Do you still recognize those stages, and if so, where do you see yourself now in that trajectory?

Viet Cuong: It was so funny when I was sitting in Nils Landsberg’s doctoral defense because it was very meta and kind of strange to listen to someone discuss the stages of my life, (laughs) but I think it's true. I would say I'm in a completely different place now than I was in 2019. COVID happened and there was a pretty stark change in terms of the music I wanted to write during that time. I think in his dissertation Nils called my second compositional stage a more whimsical era— including Bull’s-Eye and my double oboe concerto—these pieces that are really humorous and sound as though I'm winking throughout the piece. I got to a place during COVID when a lot of the music I was writing was actually all very reflective and more melancholy. During that time, and I think maybe still now, I was writing music as a way to find comfort as opposed to a way of entertaining. Vital Sines is definitely one of the pieces from that period. I was also really interested in writing music that was unapologetically beautiful and, in a way, using that idea as a means of defiance. For example, Vital Sines is a concerto for Eighth Blackbird, which is a very prominent new music ensemble, and almost every chord is a triad or major seventh chord. I guess that's how I would sum up the last couple years.

Compositional Approach

The following questions pertain to compositional components in the context of how the composer approached writing music in the early stages of his career versus currently.

it has developed over time in conjunction with your compositional voice?

Viet Cuong: I'm now much more drawn to using the piano in the process than I was before, and I keep the piano in the process longer. I’m not sure why that is. It might be something as simple as I use the piano to import music into the notation software I use now called Dorico. I didn’t do that prior to this when I was using Finale. I would say I also think more deeply about every single note and the voice leading of notes. These are concepts I think more seriously about after years of teaching music theory. I don't like to compromise on things like voice leading and I think more about it now than I did when I was younger. When I listen to a piece like Sound and Smoke or when I rehearse it with a group, I appreciate its youthful quality. It always brings me back to that time when I was twenty years old and starting my senior year of college. It was an exciting time too and I think all of us composers look at these younger pieces that we wrote before we knew as much as we do now, and there's something very endearing about it.

In terms of your overall process, do you feel as though