Oswald Huỳnh

Oswald Huỳnh (b. 1997) is a composer whose works navigate Vietnamese aesthetics and tradition, language and translation, and the relationship between heritage and identity. Huỳnh writes music that explores timbre and texture to create evocative soundscapes rooted in storytelling, culture, and memory. His orchestral work Gia Đình calls to these ideas by exploring the impact of intergenerational trauma, cultural inheritance, and what is lost between eras. Huỳnh’s latest work for orchestra, Beauty despite daylight, draws musical inspiration from ru con—traditional Vietnamese lullabies—and engages with themes of home, kinship, and isolation.  As a composer, Huỳnh has been commissioned, premiered, and performed by artists such as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Tacet(i) Ensemble, [Switch~ Ensemble], Del Sol String Quartet, Fear No Music, deaf rabbit duo, percussionist Payton MacDonald, composer/clarinetist Yoshiaki Onishi, and saxophonist Leo Schlaifer. Huỳnh’s music has been presented at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, Bay View Music Festival, New Music on the Bayou Festival, Powell Hall, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, International Composition Institute of Thailand, Arts Letters & Numbers, Ear Taxi Festival, Constellation, Oregon Bach Festival, Northwestern University New Music Conference, The Sheldon Concert Hall, and Wintergreen Music Festival, among others. He is the winner of the Musiqa Emerging Composer Commission (2022), IPO Classical Evolve Composer Competition (2022), Black Bayou Composition Award (2022), Rena J. Ratte Memorial Award (2019), and has received recognition from the New York Youth Symphony, Society of Composers, and Pacific Chamber Orchestra. Huỳnh will serve as the Composer-in-Residence with the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra for their 2023/24 season. Huỳnh holds a Bachelor of Arts from Lewis & Clark College and a Master of Music from the University of Missouri. Currently based in Portland, Oregon, he is working at the American Composers Forum as the Artist Support Associate and teaching music theory with the Portland Youth Philharmonic. His principal teachers include Texu Kim, Carolina Heredia, Stefan Freund, and Michael Johanson.