Victor Cui

Composer Victor Cui’s music is rooted in motion and physicality of sound. As a singer, Victor derives a great joy from improvising/writing melodies, and always seeks to transfer the musicality in song to all aspects of his music-making. As a result, Victor Cui constantly finds himself negotiating between spontaneity, poetics, and control. Victor is also deeply interested in literatures, cultures, histories, linguistics, and the sounds of nature. Victor is an incoming Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) student at the Shepherd School of Music of Rice University. He holds a Master of Music (MM) in composition from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and a BA/MA joint degree in Music and the Humanities from University of Chicago. Victor has studied composition with Ashkan Behzadi, Augusta Read Thomas, Hans Thomalla, Courtney Bryan, Felipe Lara, and Sky Macklay, and he has taken courses in computer music with Sam Pluta and Bryan Jacobs.