BIOGRAPHY
Vivi Kung is a second generation Taiwanese American tuba player studying at the Yale School of Music. She uses she/her/hers pronouns and is currently residing on Quinnipiac, Paugussett, and Wappinger land.
Most recently, Ms. Kung was a winner in the brass division of the 37th Pasadena Showcase House Instrumental competition. In 2019, Ms. Kung was the national winner of the Music Teacher's National Association brass division, placing first out of an initial 600 competitors. In the same year, she won third prize in the IWBC Susan Slaughter tuba solo competition. In 2018, she was the Young Artist winner of the Northwestern Tuba and Euphonium conference solo competition.
Ms. Kung has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, UCLA Philharmonia, and on stage at Warner Brothers Studios. She is a substitute artist for the American Youth Symphony and Symphoria Orchestra. She has also performed with the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps, securing a contract at the age of 17 and winning a world championship at 19.
Ms. Kung is the founder and a current member of Moniker Brass, a UCLA undergraduate brass quintet that was accepted to the 2019 American Brass Quintet Seminar at the Aspen Music Festival.
Her teachers include Aubrey Foard, John Rojak, and Carol Jantsch.
In addition to her musical pursuits, Ms. Kung is an ethnic studies alumni from the UCLA Asian American studies department. Her research interests include racial and gender diversity in professional musical vocations, and the role of the model minority myth in orchestral instrumental tropes. She is currently a representative on the Yale Graduate and Professional Student Senate and serves on the Diversity and Inclusion board, where she works to implement more equitable measures and actions for racial justice at Yale University. She is also on the editorial staff of the Tuba Euphonium Social Justice Initiative (TESJI) newsletter, where she works to curate a quarterly newsletter for the tuba euphonium community.
Most recently, Ms. Kung was a winner in the brass division of the 37th Pasadena Showcase House Instrumental competition. In 2019, Ms. Kung was the national winner of the Music Teacher's National Association brass division, placing first out of an initial 600 competitors. In the same year, she won third prize in the IWBC Susan Slaughter tuba solo competition. In 2018, she was the Young Artist winner of the Northwestern Tuba and Euphonium conference solo competition.
Ms. Kung has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, UCLA Philharmonia, and on stage at Warner Brothers Studios. She is a substitute artist for the American Youth Symphony and Symphoria Orchestra. She has also performed with the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps, securing a contract at the age of 17 and winning a world championship at 19.
Ms. Kung is the founder and a current member of Moniker Brass, a UCLA undergraduate brass quintet that was accepted to the 2019 American Brass Quintet Seminar at the Aspen Music Festival.
Her teachers include Aubrey Foard, John Rojak, and Carol Jantsch.
In addition to her musical pursuits, Ms. Kung is an ethnic studies alumni from the UCLA Asian American studies department. Her research interests include racial and gender diversity in professional musical vocations, and the role of the model minority myth in orchestral instrumental tropes. She is currently a representative on the Yale Graduate and Professional Student Senate and serves on the Diversity and Inclusion board, where she works to implement more equitable measures and actions for racial justice at Yale University. She is also on the editorial staff of the Tuba Euphonium Social Justice Initiative (TESJI) newsletter, where she works to curate a quarterly newsletter for the tuba euphonium community.
