Biography
Jerry (Chiwei) Hui has written a wide variety of music that ranges from orchestral music that brings the soundscape of the East into the West, to light-hearted choral arrangements of pop and jazz tunes. As a late-bloomer who did not start serious music training until undergraduate, Mr. Hui has already written for numerous musicians, campus ensembles and community ensembles. His music has been performed in festivals such as the Music Today Festival in Eugene, Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, and Society of Composers conferences. His choral piece Of Water & Love was recently awarded the 2008 Robert Helps Prize. He has won the University of Wisconsin Madison Concerto Competition twice with the orchestral pieces Wang Zhao Jun and Fragmentation. Erythros: Four Variations in Red, his first half-evening multimedia work, was premiered on March 10 2007 at the University of Oregon, funded partially by the University of Oregon Graduate Research Award.
As a conductor, Mr. Hui has founded and directed various community choirs, church choirs, and orchestras. He was the founder, director and conductor of Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble in Eugene, OR, focusing on contemporary music, with a repertoire that included Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, Webern's Concerto, Adams' Gnarly Buttons, Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, and works by student composers. He had also appeared in the Eugene Symphony concert in October 2005 as an assistant choral conductor, in Holst's The Planets. He is active in conducting for fellow composers, and has premiered over 30 new works in the past three years. Currently he is the director of Museko, a Madison, WI choir multicultural in both its singers and repertoire.
Jerry Hui is active as a performer, primarily singing in small vocal ensembles and choruses, and has often appeared as a baritone or tenor soloist. Mr. Hui has sung Renaissance and contemporary music as a bass, tenor and countertenor. He has recently performed in the Bay Area in a production of Handel's Clori, Tirsi e Fileno. He is also interested in Renaissance dances and gestures, and has performed in the Madison Early Music Festival and University of Oregon Collegium Musicum.
A native of Hong Kong, Jerry Hui is pursuing a DMA degree in music composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Bachelor's degree in music composition and computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his Masters degree in music composition and choral conducting from the University of Oregon. Mr. Hui's principal composition teachers include David Crumb, Stephen Dembski, Robert Kyr, Joel Naumann and Laura Schwendinger. His conducting teachers are Bruce Gladstone, Sharon Paul, Hirvo Surva, and Beverly Taylor.