Ming Tsao

Ming Tsao (Chinese: 曹明; pinyin: Cáo Míng) is a Chinese-American composer based in Berlin, Germany.
== Biography ==
Ming Tsao was born in Berkeley, California. His father, Jung Ying Tsao (曹仲英), emigrated to California from Tianjin, China and was a collector and scholar of Chinese painting. He influenced Ming Tsao’s studies into Chinese art and culture. His mother, Elna Hoeber, began Ming Tsao’s musical education at the age of five with the violin. Her father, Frank Hoeber, was a violinist who emigrated to Colorado from Vienna, Austria and played first violin in the Denver Symphony Orchestra. 
Ming Tsao studied violin and viola with Ronald Erickson and performed violin in the Berkeley Youth Orchestra and viola in the Young People’s Symphony before switching to the electric bass in high school where he studied with guitarist Joe Satriani and played in the Berkeley High School Jazz Band. After high school, he traveled to Suzhou, China for a year to study the traditional zither with the renowned guqin performer Wu Zhaoji (吳兆基). He pursued a B.M. degree at the Berklee College of Music, initially studying bass improvisation with Bruce Gertz but changed to traditional music composition under John Bavicchi with a focus on counterpoint, harmony, and orchestration. After receiving his B.M. degree, he completed an M.A. degree in ethnomusicology at Columbia University to further his study of traditional Chinese music. During this time, he studied with the composer Mario Davidovsky and composed analog electronic music at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
Parallel to his compositional activities, he then completed an M.A. in mathematics at San Francisco State University where he received the Graduate Award for Distinguished Achievement for his research into the application of mathematical group theory to music composition. He finished his education with a Ph.D. in music composition at the University of California, San Diego, where he studied principally with the composer Chaya Czernowin and privately for a year with the composer Brian Ferneyhough. 
Ming Tsao was appointed Professor of Composition at Göteborg University, Sweden from 2009–2017 and, from 2015–2021, was Visiting Professor of Composition at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media in Germany. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021 for music composition.
== Style ==
The composer Ming Tsao writes music with a sensuality that arises out of a focus on the inherent qualities of sound – what the composer calls its “materiality” – coupled to an extreme formal rigour and a highly precise, finely-crafted compositional style. In the foreground of his music is a contemporary conception of musical lyricism, which is fractured, multi-faceted and problematised to reflect the modern experience. His compositions have been described as “virtuosic” and the work of “a highly complex thinking” conveying a “dazzling range of invention.”
Many of Ming Tsao’s works are the result of a critical and deep-thinking examination of the Western classical tradition as well as his serious engagement with Chinese traditional music. Increasingly, opera is the forum where Ming Tsao brings these interests together. The chamber opera Prosperos Garten consists of two acts that are also separate works: Die Geisterinsel, commissioned by the Staatsoper Stuttgart and premiered in 2011, is a re-working of Johann Rudolph Zumsteeg’s 18th century opera on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Mirandas Atemwende, premiered in Berlin in 2015, takes Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung as the starting point for an expressionist exploration of character. His large-scale opera Mudan ting (牡丹亭,The Peony Pavilion) reimagines the Chinese Ming dynasty Kunqu opera of the same name. In addition to his research on mathematical applications to music composition, his principal interest has been the relation between poetry and music composition. He has focused his musical works on the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, and J.H. Prynne, as well as the Chinese poet Su Hui (蘇蕙). 
His projects have included two works for large ensemble: Refuse Collection, a reaction to the oeuvre of French filmmakers Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub; and Plus Minus, the first full realisation of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s open composition of the same name. Other compositions include Triode Variations, a 30-minute complex work for 22 instruments, Plus or Minus, a second full realization of Stockhausen’s Plus Minus for two pianos and electronics with the SWR Experimentalstudio in Freiburg, and Das wassergewordene Kanonbuch for chamber choir based on Medieval and Renaissance puzzle canons.
A selection of his chamber works was collected on the portrait CD Pathology of Syntax, released in 2014 by Mode Records. Kairos Music has released his works on three CDs, Plus Minus (2014), Die Geisterinsel (2017), and Triode Variations (2022). His music is published by Edition Peters.
== Musical Works ==
Geisterkonzert (2025 –26), guitar and orchestra
Mudan ting (2019 ­– 23), large-scale opera
Triode Variations (2019 – 20), large ensemble
Dritte Stimme zu Bachs zweistimmigen Inventionen (2019), clavichord
Plus or Minus (2017 – 18), two pianos and electronics
Refuse Collection (2017), large ensemble
Das wassergewordene Kanonbuch (2016 – 17), chamber choir
Mirandas Atemwende (2014 – 15), chamber opera
Plus Minus (2012 – 13), large ensemble
Serenade (2012), large ensemble
Die Geisterinsel (2010 – 11), chamber opera
(Un)cover (2008), seven instruments
If ears were all that were needed… (2007), solo guitar
Pathology of Syntax (2006 – 07), string quartet
One–Way Street (2006), six instruments
The Book of Virtual Transcriptions (2004 – 05), seven instruments
Not Reconciled (2002 – 03), five instruments
Canon (2001), clarinet and cello
Category:American people
Category:Chinese people
Category:American composers