Born in Iowa City, Iowa, Ching-chu Hu studied at Yale University, Freiburg Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany, The University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan, where he earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition.  His composition teachers included William Bolcom, William Albright, Michael Daugherty, Leslie Bassett, Bright Sheng, Evan Chambers, David Gompper and Richard Hervig.  His conducting teachers included Alastair Neale, David Stern, and James Dixon.  He also studied piano with Donald Currier, Stéphane Lemelin, and Logan Skelton and bass with Diana Gannett and Eldon Oberecht.

Honors have included composer-in-residence at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, and guest composer at the American Music Week Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria.  He has been a composition fellow at the Aspen and Bowdoin Music Festivals, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and the Banff Centre for the Arts.  He has received performances in various national and international festivals and concerts, including the Alternativa Festival (Center “DOM”) in Moscow and Wigmore Hall in London, England.  He wrote the score for The Life and Times of Jimmy B., which was awarded a Directors Guild of America’s East Coast Filmmaker Award. He was the first recipient of the Bayley-Bowen Fellowship, Denison University’s first endowed fellowship for a junior faculty member.

Recent commissions include works for the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection and the Western Springs School of Talent Education. Recent commissions include works for the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, the Granville (Ohio) Bicentennial Committee, the University of Iowa School of Music’s Centennial celebration, the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Children’s Choir and the Chamber Music Connection, string duo Low and Lower, Western Springs Suzuki Talent Education Program’s 30th Anniversary Concert in Chicago Symphony Center’s Orchestra Hall as well as Newark Granville Youth Symphony’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts performance. Other premieres include commissioned work for marimbist Mayumi Hama and pianist Minju Choi.

Ensembles performing his work include the Kiev Philharmonic, the National Dance and Opera Orchestra of China, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, Moscow Conservatory’s Studio New Music Ensemble, Brave New Works New Music Ensemble, the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the University of Iowa Center for New Music.  Solo artists include violinists Wolfgang David, Scott Conklin and Gabe Bolkosky, flutists Betty Bang Mather and Tamara Thweatt, bassists Robert Black and Anthony Stoops, soprano Jennifer Goltz, erhu artist Guo Gan, percussionist Chris Froh, saxophonist Chris Beaty, and conductors Donald Portnoy, Peter Stafford Wilson, and Chris Younghoon Kim.

Reviews have described his music as “breathtaking,”(allmusic) “richly textured” (Charleston Post and Currier), and “incredible” (The Columbus Dispatch).  The Strad Magazine writes of his “tender luminous harmonies,” and the American Record Guide describes his music as “meditative and solemn…the best work [on the CD Violinguistics].”

His music can be heard on the ERM Media’s “Masterworks of the New Era” CD series (vol. 4), Albany Records CD “Finnegan’s Wake” (Troy 680), “Star of the County Down” (Troy 937), “Spirals: American Music in Moscow” (Troy 1095), “Vive Concertante” (Troy 1110-11), “Violinguistics” (Troy 1138), “Insights: New Music for Double Bass” (Troy 1457), and Capstone Records’ “Journeys” (CPS-8809).

Ching-chu Hu is Professor of Composition and Theory and was recently named the Richard Lucier Endowed Professor.