About

Veronica “Vonnie” Kao is an emerging composer from Boston, Massachusetts. Her works make up a mosaic of styles and her pieces include motivic-based writing in addition to colors that spin out organically into poetic, phrases.  Taking inspiration from a variety of contemporary musical styles, folk musics, literature, and human psychology, her compositions can move freely between free timbral exploration, quasi-tonal lyricism, and punchy, energetic, and rustic folk-inspired styles. Her pieces have been premiered in Williamstown and Boston and abroad in Austria and France.  

Kao has B.A.’s in Music and Psychology from Williams College where she studied composition with Zachary Wadsworth and flute performance with Jacqueline DeVoe. There, she was awarded the William W. Kleinhandler Prize for Excellence in Music. Trained in classical flute performance from a young age, Kao spent her high school years studying at the New England Conservatory’s preparatory division with flutist Jessica Lizak and continues to be an avid and passionate performer on flute and piccolo with ensembles such as the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra, at the I/O New Music Festival, and in various musical theatre pit orchestras.  In 2021 Kao traveled to Vienna, Austria to study flute performance with Furugh Karimi, chamber music performance with Ulrike Anton, and composition with Gabriele Proy. In 2022 she traveled to Puget-Ville, Provence, France to study with composer Yuko Uebayashi and flutist Carol Wincenc for the La Mélodieuse Festival.  

One of her goals in music is to create a culture that makes contemporary classical music more accessible to people of all backgrounds.  She seeks to highlight experiences that go underrepresented in the classical canon.  For her senior recital at Williams, Kao curated a program of pieces by Asian and Asian-American composers that included an original piece for flute, viola, and piano.  Inspired by depictions of the human psyche in literature as well as her studies in psychology, Kao’s works touch on themes of identity, illness, and trauma and highlight these inner experiences, often as a subtle form of activism and resistance. 

Kao has won a Platinum Prize and the Artistic Visionary Special Award from the Beethoven International Music Competition S1 2023 and was a finalist in the International Artists Competition. Kao is the recipient of the 2023 Alton Adams Award for Emerging Composers. Her works have been performed by ensembles such as counter)induction and The Rhythm Method.

Kao is currently pursuing her M.M. in Music Composition at the Boston Conservatory with Prof. Mischa Salkind-Pearl.