Viet Cuong (b. 1990) is a young, “show-stealing” composer who has had works recently performed in venues across the United States, Canada, South Africa, and Japan. Viet currently studies at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University with Oscar Bettison, and previously with Kevin Puts. While at Peabody, he was named a Presser Undergraduate Scholar and received the Peabody Alumni Award, two of the school’s highest honors awarded to undergraduate students. Other scholarships include the Evergreen House Foundation scholarship, a Susan and Ford Schumann Merit Scholarship from the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the 2011 Louis and Anne J. Bachrach Memorial Gift from the Bowdoin International Music Festival. During the Aspen and Bowdoin music festivals he studied with composers Sydney Hodkinson, Derek Bermel, and Robert Beaser. Viet will be an Associate Artist for Melinda Wagner at the Atlantic Center for the Arts this summer and enter Princeton University’s Ph.D. program as a Naumburg and Roger Sessions Fellow in the fall.

Viet’s works have been performed at the Aspen Music Festival by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the International Double Reed Society Conference by Trio La Milpa (comprised of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra oboe section), the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music at Bowdoin, the National Band Association Summer Symposium, clarinetist Anthony McGill, and all across South Africa during the Yale Concert Band’s 2011 May tour. The Peabody Wind Ensemble recently premiered Viet’s newest wind band piece, Sound and Smoke, and the Cobb Wind Symphony presented the piece on an international stage at the 2011 Midwest Clinic. Additionally, three Japanese wind ensembles are performing Sound and Smoke in 2012. Current projects include a flute/piccolo piece for Zachariah Galatis and a work for the Poulenc Trio. His music is published by Maventi Music.

Viet was a winner of the National Band Association Young Composer Mentor Project, the Trio La Milpa Composition Competition, and the Prix d’Été Composition Competition. He was also a finalist in the 2009 BMI Student Composer Awards, the 2011 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, and the youngest composer to receive an honorable mention in the ASCAP/CBDNA 2010 Frederick Fennell Prize.

Viet’s work as a composer is bolstered by his versatility as a performer; he has performed in the Georgia All-State Band as a percussionist, as well as a clarinetist. As a percussionist, he performed as a xylophone soloist at the 2007 Percussion Arts Society International Convention in Columbus, Ohio and in 2005 at The Midwest Clinic in Chicago, Illinois, both with the Lassiter High School Percussion Ensemble. His percussion teacher for four years was William Wilder, Assistant Principle Percussionist and Timpanist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Viet has also played and studied clarinet intensively, with Edward Palanker, bass clarinetist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Alcides Rodriguez, bass clarinetist of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Viet studied piano since the age of seven with Margaret Jackson and concert pianist Robert Henry.

Photo by Wasin Prasertlap