Betty Ann Wong is an American author, composer, and multi-media musician.
Early life and training
A native of San Francisco, Wong and her twin sister Shirley grew up speaking Cantonese at home as well as English. Wong began piano lessons at age 7 with Eva Chan, then studied with Lev Shorr. She received a B.A. in music from Mills College in 1960, where she studied with Morton Subotnick, Nathan Rubin, and Colin Hampton, and performed with Hysteresis, a women's creative arts group that included several Bay-area artists. In 1971, she completed a master's degree in music at the University of California, where she studied composition with Pauline Oliveros, Robert Erickson, and Kenneth Gaburo. Wong also studied Chinese music with David Liang, Lawrence Lui, and Leo Lew.
Career
In addition to piano, Wong plays sitar, guzheng, saz, kanjira and several other traditional Asian instruments. She has worked as a piano teacher at the San Francisco Music Conservatory and the University of California. She has also worked as an arts and crafts instructor and coordinator for the Community Center Chinese Music Workshops, where she and her sister, Shirley began teaching Chinese music in 1973. The workshops were a joint project of the Community Center and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, funded through a Rockefeller grant. With Shirley, Wong co-manages and performs with the Flowing Stream Ensemble, a sizhu which was founded in 1973. Wong visited New Delhi in 1974 and became interested in Hindustani music. She returned to California and took classes at the Center for World Music at the Julian Morgan Theater in Berkeley, California. Wong founded the Phoenix Spring Ensemble in 1977 to integrate European classical music, American jazz improvisation, and extended instrumental techniques with traditional Chinese music. Wong composed film scores for the Academy Award-winning movie producersAllie Light and Irving Saraf. In 1988, she received the Hollywood Dramalogue Critics Award for Outstanding Achievement for Original Music Theater for her work with the American Conservatory Theater's production of Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions. She has directed the Pursuit of Excellence Concert Series since 1990. Wong is also a board member of the Junior Bach Society.
