SVAD - School of Visual Arts & Design

As a national and international award-winning composer, Stella Sung's compositions are performed throughout the United States and abroad. She is Composer-in-Residence for the Orlando (FL) Philharmonic Orchestra, and Dance Alive National Ballet (Gainesville, FL).

Since 2003, Sung has been using digital and multi-media applications in her concert and symphonic compositions, as well as in music for dance and ballet. As a collaborative artist, her most recent large-scale work, The Circle Closes, calls for the use of digital lighting design which is synchronized with the music. Additionally, the unique and pioneering use of "singing" crystal bowls as part of the instrumentation for The Circle Closes, is perhaps the first ever, serious concert work to use these bowls within the fabric of an orchestral composition. This feature will likely be used again in the compositions of Stella Sung, forming a "signature sound" for her work.

Stella Sung is the recipient of the 2007-2010 Phi Kappa Phi National Artists Award, as well as a 2009-10 "Meet the Composer" award. She is a two-time winner of a Florida Individual Artists Fellowship, sponsored by the Division of Cultural Affairs for the State of Florida, as well as the 2005 recipient of a Florida Artists Enhancement award. She was a Fellow at the prestigious MacDowell Colony, and was the recipient of the Norton Stevens Fellowship. Other awards have been from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, the German Ministry of Culture, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), and the Division of Cultural Affairs of the State of Florida. Premieres have included performances at Carnegie Hall (New York, NY), Symphony Hall (Boston, MA), the Sydney Opera House (Sydney, Australia),the Schauspielhaus (Berlin, Germany), the Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C), Merkin Hall (New York, NY), the Nathan H. Wilson Center for the Performing Arts (Jacksonville, FL), the Jacoby Concert Hall (Jacksonville, FL), the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre (Orlando, FL), the Curtis Phillips Center for Performing Arts (Gainesville, FL), the E.J. Thomas Center for the Performing Arts (Akron, OH), and the Chrysler Center for Performing Arts (VA). During 2010, her works will be performed by the Orlando (FL), Wichita (KA), Sarasota (FL), and North Carolina (NC) symphony orchestras, with additional performance of her chamber works throughout the US, Europe, and Asia.

Commissions have included works for world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the German Ministry of Culture (Rhineland-Pfalz), the Dayton Symphony Orchestra (Dayton, OH), the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra (Jacksonville, FL), the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra (Orlando, FL), the Akron Symphony Orchestra (Akron, OH), the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra (Orlando, FL), the Florida Young Artists Orchestra (Orlando, FL), the Etowah Youth Orchestra (Gadsden, AL), the Azure Ensemble (NY), Dance Alive National Ballet (State touring ballet company of Florida), the Lyric Arts Trio (Kansas City, KA), saxophonist Claude Delangle (Conservatoire de Paris), guitarist Andrea Vettoretti (Rome, Italy), guitarist Eladio Scharrón (Orlando, FL), flautist Donna Wissinger, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet (NY, NY), the Rollins College (Winter Park, FL), and the 2000 Alabama All-State Festival Orchestra (Tuscaloosa, AL).

Several documentary films have been made about Sung's work. Her highly acclaimed composition for orchestra, Rockwell Reflections, was excerpted and made into a five-minute film by film-maker Lisa Mills and was selected for the Cultural Arts award at the 2009 International MOFILM short film festival. Another documentary film about Sung's Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra by film-maker Aaron Hosé, was selected for two Telly Awards (2007).

Dr. Sung is also an active composer for film, as has recently completed the score for the full-length documentary film, Voices in the Clouds. Her work on the short animation, Atlas' Revenge, (based upon Sung's orchestral work of the same title) was selected as the First Place winner at the 2010 SIGGRAPH conference (Time and Space category). Sung is currently working on other film projects to be released within the next two years.

The music of Stella Sung is published by the Southern Music Company (USA), Theodore Presser Music Publishers (USA), Editions Henry Lemoine (France), and Sonic Star Music Productions, and is currently available on Koch International Recordings, Cambria Master Recordings, Sinfonica (Italy), Eroica Master Recordings, and Albany Records. Sung's compositions have been broadcast on radio stations world-wide including WGBH-Boston, WNYC-New York, the Bavarian Radio (Munich,Germany), the Swedish National Radio, and Radio Vaticana (Rome, Italy).

Sung holds the Bachelor of Music degree (piano performance) from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), the Master of Fine Arts degree (Composition) from the University of Florida, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree (piano performance) from the University of Texas at Austin. Her piano teachers included Theodore Lettvin, Louis Nagel, Gary Wolf, and David Renner. She studied composition with John D. White, Edward Troupin, Donald Grantham, and Eugene Kurtz. Dr. Sung has been recognized by the University of Florida as a Distinguished Alumna, an Alumna of Outstanding Achievement, and has received a Distinguished Achievement Award from UF.

Dr. Sung is director of the Center for Research and Education in Arts, Technology, and Entertainment (CREATE) at the University of Central Florida, and is Professor of Music in UCF's School of Visual Arts and Design (Digital Media), College of Arts and Humanities.