Ursula Kwong-Brown
Berkeley Sounds Composer Fellow
Biography
Ursula Kwong-Brown (b. 1987) is a composer and media artist from New York City. Her work has been performed in diverse venues including Carnegie Hall and Le Poisson Rouge in New York and the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her awards include the Bowdoin Festival Composition Prize, the Chicago Ensemble’s “Discover America” prize, the Longfellow Chorus “Director’s Prize,” Columbia University’s Sudler Arts Prize, and UC Berkeley’s George Ladd Prix de Paris and Nicola de Lorenzo Prizes. Ursula received her Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 2010, graduating with honors in music and biology, and studied abroad at the Royal College of Music in London. In 2012, she started a combined M.A./Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley with support from a Mellon-Berkeley fellowship. After earning a Master of Arts in music composition in 2014, she expanded her focus to include New Media studies and has been experimenting with sound spatialization at the Center for New Music & Audio Technologies, and learning about design and interface aesthetics at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation. Ursula plans to graduate in 2018 with a Ph.D. in New Media & Music.