Jeffrey Ching: An update

Jeffrey Ching’s over 200 musical creations stand above those of his peers for being the most innovative, original, and historically and philosophically synthesized, as also the most widely interpreted abroad.

The redoubtable prodigy Jeffrey, with no previous musical education, was already composing before he was ten, and at 17, his opera buffa Rendezvous in Venice was premiered. His Third Symphony, commissioned by the government to mark the centennial of Philippine independence in 1998, fuses Balinese gamelan, Chinese Ming and Spanish Baroque elements into a continuous, 45-minute collage for three orchestras and a male chanter.

Ching’s hour-long Terra Kytaorum for ten brass players and two percussionists, premiered by Weltblech (World Brass) in Berlin in 2001, creates a pseudo-historical liturgical service for the last Mongol emperor out of the diverse national traditions that could have been represented at his court of French, Tibetan, Chinese, Korean and Japanese courtiers.

Ching’s latest symphony, his fifth entitled Kunstkammer, is an animated dialogue engaged in by the civilizations of Renaissance Italy, Ottoman Turkey, and Qing China. It was commissioned by the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin at the behest of Michail Jurowski who conducted its world premiere in Berlin in March 2006, with the solo parts rendered by the award-winning Trio Neuklang. Conductor and soloists will repeat the work with the WDR Rundfunk-Orchester Koln at the 2008 Ruhr Triennale.

In November 2006, Michail Jurowski’s son Dmitri took Ching’s Fourth Symphony, Souvenir des Ming, to the Shanghai International Arts Festival, where he premiered the work with the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra. Originally a Jeunesses Musicales World Youth Orchestra commission, the piece is in a single extended movement lasting 35 minutes, in the form of a passacaglia and fugue based on fragments of Ming dynasty temple hymns. The entire work is in fractal proportions which enable the chromatic polyphony of J.S. Bach and the equal temperament discovered by the Ming musicologist Zhu Zaiyu to engage in a kind of intellectual conversation. (N.B. Fractal is a curve or geometric figure each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole.)

Born in Manila of Chinese-Filipino parents, Jeffrey lived in England from 1983 to 2003, and now lives in Berlin with his wife, the eminent Spanish-Filipino soprano Andion Fernandez of the Berlin Opera. Establishing an unprecedented academic record, Jeffrey holds degrees with honors in music, composition, philosophy and Chinese history from Harvard, Cambridge and London Universities, and was lecturer in music at London U. from 1987 to 1991.

As composer, he represented the Philippines in three major cultural delegations to China. In August 1990, he prepared the Beijing premiere of his ballet La Gitana with the Central Ballet of China as part of a historic cultural exchange between RP and China. In April 1993, he led the RP delegation on a well-received Chinese tour of his chamber music. In June of 1997, he and a second delegation headed by the late National Artist Leonor Orosa Goquingco toured China in performances of his cantata Rizal (based on Leonor’s play “Her Son, Jose Rizal”), and of other vocal and chamber works.

In December 1998, the President named Ching one of five outstanding Young Filipinos of the Year for having expanded the scope and quality of Filipino musical literature, with no other Filipino composer having achieved such depth, dimension and volume of work at so young an age. In June 2003, Ching received the President’s Jose Rizal Award for Excellence (in the category of Art, Literature and Culture).

Ching’s latest work, an opera based on a 14th century Chinese play, is scheduled for September 2009 as a co-production between China and Germany. Recently, his Sonata in D for Violin and Piano was performed by Gilopez and Corazon Kabayao at the CCP Little Theater. The duo premiered the Sonata in Makati on Aug. 3, 1990 and toured China with it in 1993. Ching has dedicated the work to the Kabayaos “with affection and gratitude for their appreciation and advocacy of my music.”