"I mean this: Pro-rated, considering that this 17-year-old [composer/writer] had spent comparatively few days on this planet, Prom was the best musical I'd ever read."
—Peter Filichia's Diary, Theatermania.com
Bio
(N.B. For a bio in list format, visit the About page.)
Derrick Wang began teaching himself to compose at the age of four. He is now a composer, lyricist, and pianist, creating dramatic music for the stage, studio, and concert hall.
He received his education at Harvard University (Phi Beta Kappa; AB Music magna cum laude; Language Citation in Chinese), the Yale School of Music (MMus Composition on full scholarship), and the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University (Advanced Certificate in Piano).
His music has won numerous awards and competitions including the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award, BMI Student Composer Award, American Modern Ensemble Composition Competition, Hugh F. MacColl Prize and John Green Fellowship (Harvard), and John Day Jackson Prize (Yale).
His work has been performed at venues such as Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater (New York, NY), Ars Nova Theater (New York, NY), Center Stage (Baltimore, MD), the Forbidden City Concert Hall (Beijing, China), and the Shanghai Grand Theatre (Shanghai, China).
As a pianist, he has performed as a soloist for Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court, accompanied Broadway and TV star Christine Ebersole on five seconds’ notice, sung and played with pop performer Katharine McPhee (of American Idol fame), performed his own arrangements with operatic soprano Nicole Cabell, and entertained crowds with his blistering piano renditions of pop hits.
He has also worked in arts management at the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Lincoln Center (New York, NY), and Universal Studios (Hollywood), arranged music for Marvin Hamlisch and for the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, served as a Resident Artist (composer-librettist) at American Lyric Theater, and taught an original creative-writing curriculum to urban New Haven elementary-school students.
He is currently a Houff Scholar and J.D. candidate at the University of Maryland School of Law. Current projects include The Master Builder, an opera about one architect’s meteoric rise to power, and Prom, a musical about the end of innocence in the age of smartphones.
More information is available at www.derrickwang.com.
[January 2011]
