Alumni Gazette

Composer Tonia Ko ’10E has continued to rack up honors ever since winning the Eastman composition department’s award for excellence, the Louis Lane Prize, three out of her four years as a student.

Her latest accolade is a 2018 Guggenheim fellowship, a testament to her past achievements and continued creative promise.

Ko, who was born in Hong Kong and raised in Honolulu, incorporates a variety of media into her compositions, bringing aural, visual, and tactile elements together. In her ongoing project “Breath, Contained,” for example, Ko transforms stretches of bubble wrap into a versatile musical instrument. In “Whistling Tree,” sculpture serves as both visual art and a sound installation. She writes, “I have developed a mode of tactile performance—techniques that reveal a material’s potential as both art and sound object. For example, bubble wrap’s buoyancy, transparency, and inherent rhythm determine its sonic identity and the performer’s physical movements. I investigate the space where pressure meets friction.”

Ko’s works have been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, and at the Tanglewood, Aspen, and Santa Fe chamber music festivals. From 2015 to 2017, she was composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists. —Karen McCally