Darren is a Canadian-born composer who is based in Vancouver. He enjoys writing music for acoustic instruments, films, and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Through his recent encounters with electoacoustic music Darren became fasinated by its limitless possibilities and will continue his explorations. He had the opportunity to work with various ensembles, including Standing Wave, Piano-Erhu Project (PEP), Trio Immersio, and Rose Geller String Quartet. Darren’s first orchestral composition, To Liberate, will be premiered by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra at the Winnipeg New Music Festival in January 2023. His percussion quartet will be premiered by TorQ Percussion Quartet at Soundstreams in Toronto on October 22. Darren’s collaborations with the Musqueam artist Debra Sparrow culminated in performances of his music as parts of installations and showcases of Debra’s Salish weavings, which took place at venues across Vancouver, such as the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Christ Church Cathedral, and the Vancouver international Airport. His film score, Stargazer, was awarded Best Score by New York Film Awards in November 2018. 

Darren began studying piano at age 5 and began composing at the age of 20. Having spent his childhood in Guangzhou China, Darren is inspired by the melodious language of Cantonese. He received a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Music from UBC, where he is currently pursuing his Master of Music in Composition. 

Darren is fascinated by languages and how they could inform and inspire our creation of music. He had conducted brief research on the Cantonese tones and their restrictions on musical settings of Cantonese text. Currently Darren is researching orchestration inspired by Québécois French and Cantonese with Louis-Michel Tougas who is a DMA student at McGill University, with the help of the ACTOR Collaborative Student Project Grant