Wang Zongxian | Visiting Tutor

Nathan Wang is one of the most successful composers in Hollywood and Asian cinema. Prolific and versatile, he has written music for Jackie Chan movies, Steven Spielberg documentaries and movies for Disney, Dreamworks, Warner Bros. and Paramount studios. His compositions have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Opera, and the Chicago Symphony.

Born to parents who grew up from Shanghai, Nathan was raised in Los Angeles. After graduating from Pomona College, he received a Rotary Ambassador scholarship to continue his studies at Oxford University.

Nathan’s many accolades include a collaboration with Hans Zimmer for Steven Spielberg's "The Last Days," which won an Academy Award for best documentary in 1999. He was also personally awarded a Singapore Grammy for "Best Arrangement of a Song" and also received an Emmy for the award winning film "Reefer Madness."

Nathan has been entrenched in film on both sides of the Pacific, having composed scores such as "She's the Man" for Dreamworks, “Playing with Fire” for Paramount,  and Disney films such as "The Game Plan” and “You Again.” In Asia, he has scored six Jackie Chan movies as well as received a Golden Horse nomination for Best Score. To date, in the Chinese entertainment industry, the movies he has scored have yielded more than $7 billion US at the box office. Just two months ago, his film “Chinatown Detective 3” debuted in China and earned the reputation of having the highest box office release of any movie, here in the US and worldwide, earning more than a billion dollars in less than a week.

Nathan was recently appointed Associate Professor of Film Scoring at the esteemed Beijing University. He continues to lecture and delights in conducting musical workshops in many institutions around China, including Nanjing University, Hangzhou University and the Shanghai Institution for Visual Arts.

Back in Southern California where he resides, Nathan continues to engage in both the local and prestigious performing arts scene. Recently, he was named 2021-2022 Composer-in-Residence for the Huntington Library in San Marino. For this residency, he is reprising his opera, “On Gold Mountain,” which he wrote for the Los Angeles Opera 20 years ago. In addition, Nathan will be writing a new musical to be premiered in 2022 for his residency, which will be loosely based on his mother’s life in Shanghai during the 1930’s.