Michael Ching

Michael Ching (born September 29, 1958) is an American composer, conductor, and music administrator.

Michael Ching was born in 1958 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Before he was one year old his family left Honolulu, and he grew up in New Orleans and Saint Paul, Minnesota.

His father was an accomplished amateur pianist and a college professor in theater and speech.

Ching later recalled, "He played everything from Chopin to Dave Brubeck transcriptions. He wanted to go into music but his family discouraged him."

Ching started piano at the age of six and was quite skilled at it, at one point considering a career as a concert pianist.

In addition, he studied flute, violin, and oboe, mostly for the sake of composition.

He started composing as a child, and by the time he reached high school he had studied composition at Interlochen and also had private composition instruction.

He attended Duke University on a composition scholarship, studying with Robert Ward and Iain Hamilton.

He graduated in 1980, and his senior project was a one-act opera retelling a vampire story set in New Orleans, which received a small performance at Duke.

Ching began his career as a National Opera Institute apprentice 1980–1981 at the Houston Grand Opera Studio, where he was involved in the company's productions and continued his composition studies with composer Carlisle Floyd.

He provided his own libretti for his first two operas: Levees (1980), a New Orleans vampire story performed at Duke University; and Cocks Must Crow (1985), based on a Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings short story and performed at Greater Miami Opera.

His early miniature opera Leo: Opera in One Cat is a jazz-based 15-minute one-act opera, with a libretto by Fernando Fonseca based on Cal Massey's story "Leo Spat".

From 1981 to 1985 he held increasingly responsible positions at the Greater Miami Opera/Florida Grand Opera.

He subsequently held conductor and executive director positions at venues including Texas Opera Theatre, Chautauqua Opera, and Triangle Music Theater.

It premiered in June 1985 at Houston Grand Opera's Texas Opera Theater, and subsequent venues included South Street Theater in New York City in October 1985.

Texas Monthly called it "a pleasant diversion but such an assured one that the Miami-based composer's talent glitters all over it."

In 1989 he was appointed Assistant to the General Director of Virginia Opera.

He was subsequently the company's Associate Artistic Director from 1991 through mid 1992.

In 1992 Ching joined Opera Memphis as Artistic Director, a position he held through 2010.

He was the opera's General Director for most of those years as well.

His fourth opera, Cue 67, a one-act 35-minute contemporary murder-mystery ghost story set in a theater, was commissioned and premiered at Virginia Opera in 1992, paired in a double bill with Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium.

It contains an eclectic blend of musical styles from opera to rock 'n' roll, pop music, and Broadway-type tunes, and the libretto is by Sandra Bernhard.

His other major operas include Buoso's Ghost (1996), Corps of Discovery (2003), Slaying the Dragon (2012), Speed Dating Tonight! (2013), and Alice Ryley (2015).

Ching's Piano Concerto, commissioned by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, had its well-received premiere, performed by Craig Bohmler, in 1997.

The San Jose Mercury wrote, "The concerto has the kind of instant appeal to listeners that every composer must dream of.... When it was finished, the crowd rose in a spontaneous ovation."

The concerto was recorded and released on the orchestra’s first commercial CD.

The San Jose Chamber Orchestra subsequently also commissioned and premiered his Psyche and Eros, a 45-minute composition for narrator and string orchestra, written in collaboration with storyteller Margaret Wolfson, in 2000.

Dan Leeson in San Francisco Classical Voice wrote that "The Ching/Wolfson collaboration is simply marvelous.... Ching is a gifted composer capable of turning out well-crafted music, very romantic when the occasion dictates and frightening when that is called for."

Metro Silicon Valley analysed the music in great depth, concluding that "[T]he technique is adroit, fluid and winningly integrated. Ching speaks music so well that he accommodates the text without a stumble.... [T]he music stands remarkably well on its own – rather like a string of pearls.... Ching might well be tempted to craft a concert suite without the transitional material."

The work's additional venues have included the Abu Dhabi Music & Art Festival and the Lincoln Center Summer Institute program in West Memphis.

Ching is best known for his operas.

He left Opera Memphis for Iowa in the spring of 2010 when his wife Barbara, a university professor and a native Iowan, was named chair of the English department at Iowa State University.

He told the Memphis Daily News, "Barbara and I always had a plan that I would be able to stay home and write and she would be the one carrying the economic ball. The time was right and the job came through."

In addition to being a freelance composer and conductor, Ching is also Chairman of the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera, which supports emerging opera creators.

A prolific and eclectic composer, he is best known nationally as the composer of innovative operas, including his a cappella adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (2011).

He has written the librettos of many of his own operas, and has done so for all of his operas composed after 2012.

He is on the board of directors of the National Opera Association.

He was Music Director of Nickel City Opera in Buffalo, New York, from 2012 to 2017, and he has been Music Director of Amarillo Opera in Amarillo, Texas, since September 2016.

In 2019 he was elected to the board of directors of the National Opera Association.