Meet Christopher Wong | Composer for film and theater

We had the good fortune of connecting with Christopher Wong and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Christopher, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I knew I wanted to try to make a career as a musician somehow since I was a teenager, but my specific career direction didn’t come into shape until I studied film composition under Jerry Goldsmith during my last year in college. A pivotal moment in my life was when I saw him conduct the sessions for Star Trek Insurrection at Paramount, and I decided it would be exciting to try to do that someday. During the next few years I met a small community of Vietnamese American filmmakers starting their careers and began working with them as their composer. As they started becoming successful, my career as a film composer became more and more shaped by what they were doing.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Anyone who might be familiar with my music probably knows about it through the context of Vietnamese cinema. The short version of that story is that I met Ham Tran, then Victor Vu, then Charlie Nguyen starting around 2002 and worked on a few feature films with them here in the US. They all ended up moving to Vietnam to work in the industry over there and continued working with me remotely, and so my music became known to the audience in Vietnam and I continued to get work in films there.

Earlier in life, after I had done a couple of movies, I think I was pushing myself to get more movies or bigger movies to work on. But what I think I’ve learned now in my 40s is that I’ve come full circle and realized what I really need for myself is just to push to be a better artist every year. I’ve realized that in an entertainment career there’s only so much you can control and it can feel haphazard when and why things happen – people’s careers can get hot for a while, then cool off for a while, they can be discovered very young, or they can be discovered later in life. And those moments of recognition are nice for those moments, but they come and go quickly, and so if you’re only chasing recognition, you’re chasing something where the satisfaction from it fades fast. But if you can feel like you’ve done everything you could to grow artistically through your lifetime, you will feel a lasting satisfaction that means more than money, awards, or fame.

This is a large reason why I decided to embark on composing my current musical theater project, “Rise to the Top”. I had written a pair of musicals with my collaborator Weiko Lin when we were very young, still in our early 20s. And then I went and worked on a lot of films, but I never lost that love for musicals. A few years ago I wanted to see if I could write a new one that was better than the ones I’d written in my 20s, it was an artistic challenge that I just needed in my life. So I asked Weiko in 2020 if he wanted to do a new one with me and we got it going! And I wanted to have a project where I was influencing the fundamental construction of the story and characters, which a film composer doesn’t get to do on movies. Although we are still in the workshopping stages, it’s turned out to be the most satisfying project I’ve embarked on in years.

I’ve come to realize that the reason I’ve gravitated towards film and theater is because I’ve always thought of music in terms of stories, even when I was a teenager. And what I’ve come to believe about my role as an artist is that I am an Asian American telling stories through music, and the stories that I want to tell are just one thread in a tapestry of thousands of stories in the Asian diaspora. So I’m actually less interested in the things that set me apart from others, and I’m more interested in what it means to be one part of this community where all these thousands of voices are needed to bring the complexity of our identities to audiences, so that the world can see that we are not a monolith, so that the world can see the layers, nuances, beauty, and sometimes even paradoxes in who we are.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Well, if I had to take them to the famous tourist zones in LA, I’d oblige, but in general I like quieter and more peaceful places than places that feel like a loud party – I’d much rather take a friend to the Getty Museum than the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If we went downtown, I would stay away from areas like the Staples Center, and I’d steer towards Little Tokyo, Olvera Street, or Chinatown. If they wanted the beach, I’d try to stay away from Santa Monica Pier and see if we could go to Ventura instead. Let’s go hiking in Topenga, that would be relaxing. I’d go to live events instead of movies – concert at the LA Phil, or see a show at East West Players. Have breakfast at a funky place like Way Station in Newhall, go to Gin’s Sushi in Pasadena, no big chain restaurants. Dim Sum at Lunasia if we wanted something indulgent. Mexican food at a place like Los Tres Hermanos. One of the places I miss the most is La Dijonaise in Culver City, they closed during the pandemic.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My wife Holley has been supportive of my creative endeavors since we met more than 20 years ago. The career of a musician can be so unpredictable, so I think it takes a person with a certain temperament to be married to a musician. She actually teaches college film music history classes, so she also functions as a quality control filter to make sure what I’m writing is good!

My mom Cynthia bought a grand piano for me to practice on when I was 8, even though I had almost no experience on the instrument at the time. Although for a long time she had tension with me choosing this as a career, I would never have ended up being able to do any of this without all the years of her investment in my childhood music training.

Certain friendships have been pushing me to be better for decades now. Ryan Rowles is someone I’ve done music with since I was 16 and I frequently bounce new ideas off of him to get his opinions. Garrett Crosby and Ian Rees are fantastic composers that I work on films with, they have the kind of talent and dependability you want with you when under a pressure situation. Joe Chang and Virginia Duan are friends that have helped me understand my identity as a Chinese American in this evolving world. Weiko Lin is a longtime collaborator who is writing the new musical “Rise to the Top” with me.

Website: http://www.pacificbluemusic.com/christopher-wong/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christopherwongmusic/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=719087395

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@gustav5th?si=y3y6pNshMm67peUT

Other: Spotify:

Rise to the Top IG:
https://www.instagram.com/risetothetopmusical/

Image Credits
Andrew Castro , Jerry Rees