Donald Womack

The music of Donald Reid Womack has been performed and broadcast on six continents, and honored by more than 100 grants, commissions and awards, including a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Japan, two Artist Fellowships from the State of Hawai‘i, and first prize in the Sigma Alpha Iota Inter-American Music Awards. His compositional output consists of more than 90 works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, chorus and voice, as well as for Japanese, Korean and Chinese instruments. His major works include a symphony, a violin concerto, a double concerto for shakuhachi, koto, and orchestra, a concerto for gayageum and orchestra, an oratorio for chorus and chamber orchestra, a triple concerto for shakuhachi, biwa and koto with ensemble of Japanese instruments, and a concerto for haegeum and orchestra.

Performers of his music include the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, the Russia Ulan Ude Symphony, the National Orchestra of Korea, the KBS Orchestra (Korea), the Changwon Philharmonic, the Louisville Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, the Honolulu Symphony Chorus, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Kyo-Shin-An Arts, the Cassatt Quartet, Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea, the Busan National Gugak Center Orchestra, the Gimhae (Korea) Gayageum Orchestra, Pro Musica Nipponia, AURA-J, the Chinese Music Virtuosi (Hong Kong), AsianArt Ensemble (Berlin), the Salzburg Mozarteum String Quartet, conductors Naoto Otomo, Kazuhiro Koizumi and David Stock, and renowned virtuosi Jiyoung Yi (gayageum), Yang Jing (pipa), Seizan Sakata (shakuhachi), Reiko Kimura (koto), Parry Karp (cello), I-Bei Lin (cello), Ignace Jang (violin), Thomas Rosenkranz (piano), and soprano Tony Arnold. A faculty member at the University of Hawai‘i since 1994, Dr. Womack has chaired the music department and presently serves as professor of composition and theory, as well as a faculty member of the Center for Japanese Studies and an associate member of the Center for Korean Studies. (www.donaldwomack.com)

—updated July 2017