Michael Ching
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Name
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Michael Ching
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Bio
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An opera composer/librettist, conductor, and songwriter, Michael Ching is the composer/librettist of the opera "Speed Dating Tonight!". With nearly one-hundred forty productions since its 2013 premiere at the Janiec Opera of the Brevard Music Center, "Speed Dating Tonight!" is one of the most popular operas of the 21st century. As of May 2024, his new opera, "Notes on Viardot," has just had its premiere at the University of South Dakota-Vermillion. Premiering weeks before the pandemic and lockdown, his opera "RSBE" still got its seventh production in the spring of 2022. Michael’s other well known opera is "Buoso's Ghost." "Buoso" is a comic sequel to "Gianni Schicchi." Recently, "Buoso" was performed at Florida Grand Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre and OperaDelaware, as well as at California State University-Fullerton and Montclair State University. During the pandemic, he created "All Dressed Up (No Place to Go)" for L'arietta Productions in Singapore, a series of nine quarantine-related songs which are now part of "Speed Dating Tonight!". In 2018-2019, two new one act operas had their premieres, "Thrivers" at Palm Springs Opera Guild, and "Eight Woods and a Van" at Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre." Additional shorter operas include "Birthday Clown" at the Savannah Voice Festival, "Dinner 4 3" (with librettist Deborah Brevoort) for Fargo Moorhead Opera, and "Completing the Picture" for Utah Opera’s commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad. As Composer-in-Residence of Savannah Voice Festival, Michael wrote "Alice Ryley" (2015) and "Anna Hunter" (2017), two works with Savannah subjects. The operas premiered together at the 2022 festival. Other works include "Slaying the Dragon" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream," opera a cappella, recorded on Albany Records. In 2021, Savannah Voice Festival workshopped his "Cenerentola" sequel, "A Royal Feast." In 2022, the Towson University will premiere a revised version of his "Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2025, his new opera "Hazel Miner" will premiere at Northern State University.
Michael is Composer-in-Residence at Savannah Voice Festival and Taos Opera Institute, and Opera consultant at EC Schirmer. He is the former Artistic Director of Opera Memphis. He is serving his second term on the board of the National Opera Institute. Michael studied composition with Robert Ward at Duke University and Carlisle Floyd at the Houston Opera Studio.
With a lifelong devotion to the craft of operatic composition, learned through the success and failure of over a dozen operas, through composition study, and through years of conducting the standard operatic repertoire, and with a strong interest in folk and country music, Michael is a somewhat of an outlier in the world of new music.
Unending Story