Research Bio
A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer/vocalist/sound artist. Leading performers and ensembles around the world have championed Ueno’s music. His piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, was featured in their repertoire for over ten years, with performances at such venues as Queen Elizabeth Hall in England, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and was aired on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001-2003 seasons. A portrait concert of Ken’s was featured on MaerzMusik in Berlin in 2011. Other ensembles and performers who have performed Ueno’s music include Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Frances-Marie Uitti, Mayumi Miyata, Teodoro Anzellotti, Aki Takahashi, Alarm Will Sound, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Steve Schick and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony, the Paul Dresher Ensemble (with Amy X Neuburg), the Nieuw Ensemble, Neue Vocalisolisten, , the Del Sol String Quartet, Vincent Royer, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Cassatt Quartet, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Prism Saxophone Quartet, the Atlas Ensemble, the Orkest de Ereprijs, and the So Percussion Ensemble.
Ueno’s music has been performed at prestigious venues around the world including Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, Ars Musica, Warsaw Autumn, the GAIDA festival, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, the Muziekgebouw, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, and Steim. He has been the featured guest composer at the Takefu International Music Festival, the Norfolk Music Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Pacific Rim Festival, the Intégrales New Music Festival, and the MANCA Festival.
As a vocalist, Ueno is renowned for inventing extended techniques and has performed as a soloist in his vocal concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in Boston and New York, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and orchestras in Sacramento, Stony Brook, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, and Berkeley. He has collaborated with esteemed artists such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Joey Baron, Joan Jeanrenaud, Pascal Contet, David Wessel, Robin Hayward, John Kelly, Jorrit Dykstra, Du Yun, Tyshawn Sorey, Ikue Mori, DJ Sniff, Biliana Voutchkova, and Steve Nerve. Additionally, he maintains ongoing duo collaborations with Kung Chi Shing, Viola Yip, Arnont Nongyao, Tim Feeney, Karen Yu, and Matt Ingalls.
As a sound artist, his installations have been commissioned and exhibited in Beijing, Guangzhou, Taipei, Mexico City, Art Basel, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong. In 2020, he created evening-long installation performances for Osage Gallery, Tai Kwun, and Freespace. Among his largest projects is Daedalus Drones (2021), a fence-like labyrinth housing a swarm of flying drones choreographed for performance, presented at the Asia Society Hong Kong as part of the New Vision Arts Festival. This fall, his installation Roomba Calligraphy—featuring sixteen Roombas simultaneously erasing and inscribing with graphite dust while equipped with custom 3D-printed speaker holders—will be shown at C-Lab Taipei and PMQ Hong Kong.
In 2024, he was a featured artist at Noise Fest, curated by the West Kowloon Cultural District, and the featured guest composer at the Takefu International Music Festival, where the Arditti String Quartet premiered his string quartet, alongside a chamber concerto for bass recorder performed by Tosiya Suzuki. A 2025 highlight was his appearance at the A Bunch of Noise festival in Shanghai.
Ueno is currently a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His writings have appeared in The Oxford Handbook, The New York Times, Palgrave Macmillan, The Drama Review (TDR), and Wiley & Sons. He is co-editor of East Asian Voices of Resistance Against Racism in Music (Ethics Press), and his biography is included in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. He also served as guest editor of Sonic Ideas (Vol. 17, no. 33), curating the special issue Listening Against the Grain—AI, Music, and the Politics of Sound and contributing the lead article, “Wrong is Right: How AI Extends Postmodernism and Mis-maps Cantonese Music.”
www.kenueno.com
Doctoral Dissertations Advised
2025 Andrew Harlan
Ghosts in the Machine: Specters of Technology in Four Electroacoustic Compositions
2023 Alfred Jimenez
an unne
Hallie Smith
. Akerselva: A Music of Reproduction
Jeremy Wexler
. Febrile Swing
2022 Kayla Ann Cashetta
Anima
Jon Yu
. Ru
2019 Scott Rubin
in tensions, for dancer, cello, and motion-sensitive live electronics
2017 Lily Chen
A Leaf Falls After, for orchestra
Ravi Kittappa
narratio for orchestra
2016. Amadeus Regucera
OPHELIA. Her heart is a clock
2015. Thatchatham Silsupan
…who can recall the past lives…, for large ensemble
2013. Matthew Goodheart
for 17 instruments
Articles and publications by Ken Ueno
Ueno, Ken, editor. Sonic Ideas: Listening Against the Grain—AI, Music, and the Politics of Sound. Vol. 17, no. 33, Jan.–June 2025, Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras (CMMAS), www.sonicideas.org. ISSN: 2317-9694.
Ueno, Ken. “Wrong is Right: How AI Extends Postmodernism and Mis-maps Cantonese Music.” Sonic Ideas, vol. 17, no. 33, Jan.–June 2025, pp. 12–16.
Ueno, Ken, and George Lewis. “Beyond Imitation: George Lewis on AI, Creativity, and Human-Machine Socialities.” Sonic Ideas: AI and Music, edited by Ken Ueno, vol. 17, no. 33, Jan.–June 2025, pp. 58–64.
Ueno, Ken, and Maiko Kawabata, eds. East Asian Voices of Resistance Against Racism in Music. Ethics Press, 2025.
Ueno, Ken. 2025. “Towards the Un-Corseting of Non-Western Bodies: Liberation through the Search for Alternative Epistemological Frames.” In East Asian Voices of Resistance Against Racism in Music, edited by Maiko Kawabata and Ken Ueno, 36–48. UK: Ethics Press.
Ueno, Ken. “Afterword: Chapter Summaries and Commentaries.” East Asian Voices of Resistance Against Racism in Music, edited by Maiko Kawabata and Ken Ueno, Ethics International Press, 2025, pp. 150–156.Ueno, Ken. “Presence and Physiovalence: Artful Resistance against the Neoliberal Digitization of Our Lives,” in TDR, Volume 68, Issue: Still Exhausted: Labor, Digital Technologies, and the Performing Arts, March 2024, pp. 132-141. Published online by Cambridge University Press: March 1, 2024. Online Link
Ueno, Ken. “Embodied Practice in Ken Ueno’s “Person-Specific” Concertos.” Oxford Handbooks Online. March 22, 2022. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190633547.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190633547-e-47?rskey=sI0O8X&result=1
Ueno, Ken. “ListN Up: Ken Ueno (August 13, 2021)” Icareifyoulisten.com, 13 August 2021.
Ueno, Ken. “Ice Skating and Stinky Foods: Notes from the Hong Kong Underground, 2018-2019,” in Charrieras, Damien, Mouillot, Francois, ed. Fractured Scenes, Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Pp. 25-36.
Ueno, Ken. “What I Do to Beat the Blues, and How Do I Come Back from the Depths of Darkness…” hocTock.com, 2018.
Ueno, Ken. Reclaiming the Aura: B.B.King and the Limits of Music Notation, Faculty Articles, Townsend Center. (September 2013) http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/publications/reclaiming-aura-bb-king-and-limits-music-notation
Ueno, Ken. Spring Encounters: Ken Ueno, Reflections on the Rite, Will Robin, editor. (August 27, 2012)
Ueno, Ken. Reclaiming the Aura: B.B.King in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in Blues in Philosophy for Everyone: Thinking Deep About Feeling Low, published by John Wiley & Sons Inc., Jesse Steinberg and Abrol Fairweather, editors, ISBN: 0470656808. (December 2011)
Ueno, Ken. Finding the Score Within, How Jimi Hendrix and Bela Bartok saved my life, and why I became a throat-singing composer, NY Times, The Score Opionator, Peter Catapano, editor. (June 22, 2011) http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/finding-the-score-within/
Ueno, Ken. John Adams Interview in The John Adams Reader, published by Amadeus Press, LLC, Thomas May, editor, ISBN: 1574671324. (June 2006)
Ueno, Ken. Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy: Continuities and Change in the Four ‘Travel Music’ Sections, Thesis paper for MMA, Yale University
Ueno, Ken. “Historical Documents by Latin American Composers” in Border Crossings: Latin American Music in New Contexts, to be published by University of California Press
Ueno, Ken. “Interviews with living Latin American Composers” in Border Crossings: Latin American Music in New Contexts, to be published by University of California Press
Citations: Dissertations, Books, Articles and publications on Ken Ueno and his work
Parys, Bryan. “Explore the World of Throat Singing, Overtone Singing, and Other Multiphonic Vocal Techniques, Listen to a playlist curated by Ken Ueno ’94 that explores the diverse history of sonic possibilities of the human voice.” Berklee.com, 24 May 2022.
Barone, Joshua. “Two Musicians of Color are Creating Their Own Space: “Everything Rises,” by the violinist Jennifer Koh and the singer Davóne Tines, mines their experiences in the white-dominated classical music field.” The New York Times, 9 April, 2022.
McPherson, Dougal Henry James. “A Practice-Led Investigation into Transdisciplinary Free Improvisation in Sound and Movement.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Huddersfield, 2022.
Piqué, Gabriel Lamar. “The Electric Saxophone: An Examination of and Guide to Electroacoustic Technology in Classical Saxophone Repertoire.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2021.
Wen Wei Po editors. “上野健 搭建會發聲的建築物 (Ken Ueno: Buildings that Make Sound).” Wen Wei Po, 27 November, 2021.
Morning Studio Editors. “Buzzing with Creativity: Two Artists Have Inspired One Another by Continually Pushing the Boundaries of Their Mediums. Now, with the Help of 120 Drones and Dozens of Musicians, They are Producing a Multisensory Show That Takes Their Work to Yet Another Level.” South China Morning Post, 24 November, 2021.
Maizels, Michael. In and Out of Phase: An Episodic History of Art and Music in the 1960s. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020.
Tarvainen, Anne. “Music, Sound, and Voice in Somaesthetics: Overview of the Literature,” in Tarvanine, Anne, Järviö, Päivi, ed. Vol. 5 No. 2 (2019): Somaesthetics and Sound, Pp. 8-23.
Tatari, Marita. “The Voice of Emerging Space: On Ken Ueno’s Sound Installations.” 2019.
Kuhlman, Julia. “Prizes, Winning, and Identity: Narrative Vocal Music of the Pulitzer Prize, 2008-2018.” Master of Arts in Musicology Thesis, College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University, 2019.
Tamanio, Yraola. “Conditions of Enablement of Sound Practices in Hong Kong and Manila.” Doctoral Dissertation, Lingnan University, 2019.
Shockley, Alan. The Contemporary Piano – A Performer and Composer’s Guide to Techniques and Resources. New York: Rowman, 2018. Pp. 48, 53, 136.
Grella, George. “Ueno, Ken.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online.
Jay, Martin. “The Sound of Somaesthetics: Ken Ueno’s Jericho Mouth,” in The Journal of Somaesthetics, Vol. 4, Number 1, 2018.
Frey, Elinor. “On Commissioning New Music for Baroque Cello” in Circuit Musique Contemporaines, Vol. 28, numéro 2, 2018.
Rejak, Adam. “The Event of Blues Music and the Effects of Technology on the Artistic Event.” Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, 2018, Pp. 53, 151-156, 172, 189.
Rugger, David. “Seeing the Voice, Hearing the Body: Countertenors, Voice Type, and Identity.” Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 2018.
Valle, José Rafael. “Data Hallucination, Falsification and Validation using Generative Models and Formal Methods.” Doctoral Dissertation, UC Berkeley, 2018.
Pinochet, Sibela. “Critical Pedagogy Practice Specifics with Adolescents.” Ph.D. dissertation, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2017.
Pestova, Xenia. “Toy Pianos, Poor Tools: Vituosity and Imagination in a Limited Context,” in Tempo, Vol. 71, No. 281, 2017.
Yi, Zhou. The Social Imperative: Architecture and the City in China. Barcelona: Actar Publishers, 2017.
Bostanci, Hafize Büsra. “New Construction Methods and Hybrid Tectonics: Robotics in Architecture,” in 2017, 2nd International Conference on Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2017.
Brunet, Philippe Pierre. “A History and Performance Guide of a Concerto for Trumpet and Chamber Ensemble: Fanfares for the Apocalypse by Ken Ueno.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Miami, 2016.
Mixter, Mary. “Deborah: The Creation of a Chamber Oratorio in One Act.” Master’s Thesis, University of North Texas, 2022.
Richman, Wendy. “Ether, Paper, Player: Composer-Performer Collaboration in 21st-Century String Writing.” Doctoral Research Project, Eastman School of Music, 2016.
Xin Gao. “Project China: A Resource of Contemporary Saxophone Music Written by Chinese-Born Composers.” Doctoral Dissertation, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2016.
Kennedy, Justin Leo. “Höömii-Tsol-Thinking Computer: Applying Selected Ancient Mongolian Vocal Practices to Contemporary Computer Music Composition.” Doctoral Dissertation, Arizona State University, 2016.
Mendoza, David Dean.”Axis Mundi, An Intercultural Composition for the Atlas Ensemble.” Doctoral Essay, University of Miami, 2015.
Bloom, Elisabeth. “Sounds & Music: Composer and Vocalist Brings Amalgam of Styles to Pittsburgh Residency.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8 November 2015.
Molla, Doriana S.. “Ken Ueno – Visible Reminder of Invisible Light.” hocTok.com, 14 September 2015.
Miquiabas, Bong. “The Modern Academy in Focus: Composer Ken Ueno.” Interlude, 16 June 2015.
Cluett, Seth. “Composer Ken Ueno Interviewed by Seth Cluett.” The Engine Institute, 8 April 2015.
Weininger, David. “Ken Ueno’s ‘Gallo’ Mixes the Confounding, Comforting.” Boston Globe, 15 May 2014.
Potter, John. “Discovering Harposaurus and Other New Musical Creatures.” Brattleboro Reformer, 10 January 2013.
Freeman, Jason. ”Rediscovering the City with Urban Remix” in Leonardo, Vol. 45, No. 5, 2012
Katz, Shira Lee. The Influence of the Extra-Musical on the Composing Process. New York: Ashgate Publishing, 2012.
Bernabo, David. “Interview with LOTUS (League of Unsound Soujnd) Members David Smooke and Ken Ueno.” David Bernabo’s Blog, 5 January 2012.
Haley, Ken. Europe @ 2.4km/h. South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2011.
Graves, Jen. “Preview.” The Stranger, 16 October 2011.
Hanafusa, Chiaki. “The Influence of Japanese Composer on the Development of the Repertoire for the Saxophone and the Significance of the Fuzzy Bird Sonata by Takashi Yoshimatsu.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of North Texas, 2010. Pp. 63.
Ficarra, Evelyn. “Vague/Fenêtres.” Doctoral Dissertation, UC Berkeley, 2010.
Bergmann, Emilie. “Sor Juana’s “Silencio Sonora: “Musical Responses to Her Poetry,” in Cuadernos de Música, Artes Visuales y Artes Escéncas, vol. 4, núm. 1-2, ocubre-septiembre, 2008, Pp. 185, 188.
Bishop, Paula. “The Patronage of Composers in the United States.” Master of Music Thesis, Boston University, College of Fine Arts, 2005.
Parker, James. “Wired for Sound, Composer Ken Ueno get a charge out of connecting classical to electronica.” Boston Globe, 27 May 2005.
Powers, Keith. “Composer Mixes Sounds to Update Classical Genre.” Boston Herald, 15 May 2004.
Research Expertise and Interest
music composition, decolonizing music, noise, sound installations, music of Japan, extended vocal techniques, overtone singing, musical culture of Japan, experimental improvisation