Whitney Sheng

Whitney Sheng is a New York and Miami-based composer whose work is informed by a sensitivity to texture, gesture, and timbre. Drawing inspiration from visual art, her music often inhabits spaces where beauty and unease coexist, blending whimsy and omen through shifting sonic landscapes.

Recent projects include new works commissioned by Divergent Studio and the Bled Contemporary Music Week. Her compositions have been performed by KLK String Orchestra, Divergent Trio, institut .abeceda, NYC Brass Choir, Zephyr Brass Collective, Dr. Clara Rees, Emma Meinrenken, Joseph Staten, and Abrielle Scott, with performances across the United States and Europe.

Her work has been presented at venues and festivals including the Lviv Philharmonic, Nottingham Contemporary, the Heidelberg New Music Festival, Bled Contemporary Music Week and Festival, Divergent Studio, and FOU Gallery. She is also a composer with the South Florida Composer Performer Collective and a co-founder of the Common Resonance Concert Series, which expands audiences for contemporary classical music through interdisciplinary programming and provides a platform for living composers; the series has produced sold-out performances across New York City.

She studied theory and composition with Cerulean S. Payne-Passmore, Martin Brody, and Jenny Olivia Johnson, and piano with Alan Feinberg and Lois Shapiro. She holds degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Wellesley College, where she graduated summa cum laude in Mathematics and Economics.