
Theresa Wong
9 Apr. – 11 May 2025
Photo by Andria Lo
Theresa Wong is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and intermedia artist whose work encompasses composition, improvisation, and the synergy of multiple disciplines. Originally active in the field of design, she embarked on her current artistic path after encountering experimental music while working as a designer in Venice, Italy. As a cellist and vocalist, Wong has forged a unique vocabulary on her instruments through extensive explorations in new playing techniques, alternative tunings, and the timbral merging of singing and playing together.
Wong’s compositions include Fluency of Trees for solo cello and voice which premiered at the Other Minds Festival in 2022, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill for The Future Is Female project, and The Unlearning, a multi-media song cycle inspired by Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War etchings, released on Tzadik. Her long-time collaboration with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman includes Harbors, released on room40 and chosen as one of Wire’s top 50 releases of 2020. Their new work, Soundless, extends Wong’s string explorations into just intonation electric guitar and electronics, and has been presented at the Volume Festival in Sidney, MOCA Los Angeles, and Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn. Wong is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition and a 2012 Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow. She is the founder of fo'c'sle, a record label dedicated to releasing adventurous music from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Originally from Schenectady, New York, Theresa currently resides in Berkeley, California. For more information, please visit: www.theresawong.org
Performance of Fluency of Trees, Other Minds Festival 2022 (Photo by ebbe roe yovino-smith)
Still from Mud Nest Signals, for string quartet, cello, voice, & video, commissioned by Del Sol Quartet
Performance of O Sleep, Southern Exposure 2010, (with Shayna Dunkelman, Luciano Chessa, Dohee Lee, Preshish Moments, Ellen Fullman, costumes by Alice Wu and video by Heike Liss)
Film still from As We Breathe, (with David Castillo, text by Mercedes Roffé), commissioned by Long Beach Opera