Gu Wei

Gu Wei is an award-winning Singaporean composer whose music has been described as having 'warmth of real splendour...'. Having lived in China, the U.K., the U.S. and Germany, he draws his influences from a wide range of sources and is a composer demonstrating versatility in his style and idiom.

His music has been performed by ensembles including Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, Peabody Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Wind Symphony, The Philharmonic Winds among others. Prizes received for his music include first prizes in WBAS Wind Band Composition Contest 2018, Macht Orchestral Composition Competition 2017, second prize in Prix d'Eté Competition 2016, and winner of the ‘Singapore Compose!’ Competition 2015. As a lover of nature, his music is often inspired by natural sights and phenomena. In 2021, together with his composers collective Consonance, he collaborated with Bergamot Quartet and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) to produce Hearing Stars, a visual album inspired by space imagery taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Besides being a composer, Gu Wei is a pianist who is particularly interested in performing on the toy piano. As an advocate for contemporary music, he has commissioned many composers to write for the toy piano, performing their music in Singapore and the U.S. He co-founded Play-Play, a toy ensemble featuring various toy instruments, which held regular concerts in New York City and later shifted to digital productions during Covid-19.

Gu Wei graduated with a Doctor in Musical Arts degree in composition from the Peabody Institute of The John Hopkins University, where he was also appointed as the Graduate Assistant in Music Theory. His major teachers include Kevin Puts, Oscar Bettison, David Smooke, Rob Keeley and Zechariah Goh.