Aiyun Huang — Percussion
Aiyun Huang enjoys a multifaceted musical life as a soloist, chamber musician, researcher, teacher, and producer. She first gained international recognition in 2002, winning First Prize and the Audience Prize at the Geneva International Music Competition. Since then, she has established herself as both a champion of the percussion repertoire and a leading collaborator in the creation of new works, having premiered more than 200 compositions over the course of her career.
Critics have praised her artistry, with Robert Everett-Green of The Globe and Mail describing her playing as “engrossing to hear and to watch” and her repertoire choices as capable of “renovating our habits of listening.” Her performance highlights include collaborations with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, and San Diego Symphony Orchestra. She has appeared at major festivals and venues worldwide, including Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, Holland Festival, Agora Festival in Paris, Banff Arts Festival, Vancouver New Music Festival, Cervantino Festival in Mexico, and the National Concert Hall and Theater in Taipei.
A strong advocate for contemporary music, Huang has given premieres of works by Shahrokh Yadegari, Shih-Hui Chen, Kuei-Ju Lin, Mari Kimura, Carlos Sanchez-Guttiérrez, Pall Ragnar Pálsson, Jesse Jones, Zosha DiCastri, Philippe Leroux, David Bithell, Nicole Lizée, George Lewis, Chris Mercer, Kotoka Suzuki, Sandeep Bhagwati, Eliot Britton, and many others.
Beyond her performances, Huang’s research explores the intersection of the performing body, media technology, theatre, dance, and music, using percussion as the central voice. Her writings have appeared in publications such as the Cambridge Companion to Percussion, Contemporary Music Review, Frontiers in Psychology, Journal of Motor Behavior, Percussive Notes, and CIRCUIT. She has released two DVDs, Saving Percussion Theatre and Memory in Motion: Percussion in Surround, and the documentary Drumming in Magic Time, which explores the performance practice of Steve Reich’s Drumming.
Huang directs the Technology and Performance Integration Research (TaPIR) Lab at the University of Toronto and founded Transplanted Roots: Percussion Research Symposium in 2015, an international forum that has since been hosted in Australia, Mexico, and the United States. In 2019, she served as Grand Jury for the Geneva International Music Competition, and she has been a keynote speaker for major gatherings, including the Australian Percussion Gathering (2016), PASIC Focus Day (2017), and the Multidisciplinary Conference at the University of Toronto (2018).
Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Huang earned her DMA from UC San Diego. From 2006 to 2017, she led the percussion program at McGill University as a William Dawson Scholar. She currently serves as Professor of Music at the University of Toronto, where she heads the percussion area and directs the University of Toronto Percussion Ensemble. She plays Kolberg Percussion instruments.