Vincent Ho

Winner of numerous awards and prizes, Vincent Ho has emerged as a much sought-after composer. During his academic studies, his works were already being performed by many prestigious ensembles and orchestras, including The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestre de la Francophonie canadienne, Arraymusic, The Arditti Quartet, The Composer’s Quartet, Earplay New Music Ensemble, Counter-Induction, and Land’s End Chamber Ensemble. His music has also been featured at numerous festivals such as The Winnipeg New Music Festival, New York’s MATA New Music Festival, Parry Sound’s Festival of the Sound, The Markham Music Festival, Toronto’s Massey Hall New Music Festival, Ottawa’s Strings of the Future Festival, and Bakersfield’s New Directions Series. In addition to North America, his works have been performed in China, France and Italy.

His many awards have included Harvard University’s Fromm Music Commission, The Canada Council for the Arts’ “Robert Fleming Prize” (for most talented young Canadian composer, 2005), The Canadian Music Centre’s “2006 Emerging Composer Prize”, the “Morton Gould Young Composer Award” (ASCAP, 2004), four SOCAN Young Composers awards (Second Prize, 1999; Third Prize, 2001; two Second Prizes, 2004), EARPLAY’s “Donald Aird Memorial Composition Award” (2004), Portland Chamber Music Festival’s “2006 Composers’ Competition”, the “Audience Prize” from the Toronto New Music Festival (1999), and The University of Southern California’s “2004 Sadye J. Moss Composition Prize”. He has also received prizes from the Strings of the Future, the PEEL Music festivals (both 1999), and was a finalist for the 2005 Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial.

Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1975, Vincent Ho began his musical training through the Royal Conservatory of Music. After receiving his Associate Diploma in Piano Performance from the RCM in 1993, he enrolled as a composition major at the University of Calgary. After earning his Bachelor of Music degree, he went on to earn his Master of Music degree from the University of Toronto (1998) and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California (2005). His mentors have included Allan Bell, David Eagle, Christos Hatzis, Walter Buczynski, and Stephen Hartke. In 1997, he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Schola Cantorum Summer Composition Program in Paris, where he received further training in analysis, composition, counterpoint, and harmony, supervised by David Diamond and Philip Lasser from the Juilliard School of Music and Narcis Bonet from the Paris Conservatoire.