Background
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Polish of Vietnamese descent, composer and pianist Ania Vu (née Vũ Đặng Minh Anh) writes music that explores the interplay between the sound properties of the words and their meanings, musical energy related to form, and varied notions of time. She also creates poetry in both Polish and English, which serves as a foundation in her musical process.
Described by the Boston Globe as an exhibition of "artful vocal writing [that] blended elegantly into the roiling cauldron of strings,” Ania’s music has garnered awards and fellowships from the American Opera Project, ASCAP, Copland House, Tanglewood, the Boston New Music Initiative, and the I-Park Foundation, among others. Most recently, she was the 2024 Composer-in-Residence at the Chelsea Music Festival, and her works have been featured at numerous festivals and conferences, including PASIC, CHIMEFest, Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music, SEAMUS, Research on Contemporary Composition Conference, Tage Neuer Musik in Regensburg (Germany), Society of Composers, College Music Society, and the Red Note New Music Festival.
In addition to being a composer, Ania is also an actively performing pianist in the standard and contemporary repertoire. She has performed at the Polish Consulate in NYC, the Chelsea Music Festival, the University of Chicago, the Skalny Center at the University of Rochester, and the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
An avid educator, Ania currently lectures both at the University of Chicago and Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music, having previously served on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2022-23, she was the Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Chicago, and from 2021-23 she was a composer fellow with the "Composers & the Voice" program. Ania holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and a BM in composition and theory from the Eastman School of Music.