Currently celebrating her 11th Anniversary Season as Music Director of Pennsylvania’s Altoona Symphony Orchestra, Teresa Cheung is in frequent demand for symphonic, choral, operatic and balle productions throughout the United States and Canada. A native of Hong Kong, she received her master’s degree in Conducting from the Eastman School of Music, and is a recipient of the JoAnn Falletta Conducting Award for the most promising female conductors.
Cheung’s recent engagements have found her on the podia of the Amarillo, American, Bakersfield, Mobile, New Amsterdam, Phoenix, Portland, Stamford, Venice and Western MichiganSymphony Orchestras, Evansville, Fort Wayne and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestras, Pennsylvania Centre Orchestra, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, New York City Ballet, Brooklyn’s Regina Opera and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. Additionally, she often appears as conductor for colleges and universities and with All State/All County orchestra festivals. She has also served as a conducting clinician for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ “Meet the Artist” programme.
Cheung is widely known for her creative concert programming, collaborative projects and community outreach programmes and for being a passionate advocate for music education for all ages. Since the beginning of her tenure in Altoona, Cheung has created numerous outreach programmes that have engaged children, high school musicians and choristers. The orchestra has also performed in numerous occasions with university ensembles, and has collaborated with Karl Middleman (Commonwealth Speaker for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council) in “Dvořák’s New World”, a programme of Humanities on the Road which was broadcast throughout the state of Pennsylvania in 2011.
Cheung began her career as Resident Conductor of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, where she was also conductor of the Evansville Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and Evansville Philharmonic Chorus. Among her many artistic initiatives, she led the Evansville Philharmonic Youth Orchestra on its first international concert tour to Japan in 2002. Subsequently, she served as Resident Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Conductor for the Bard Music Festival and SummerScape.
