Art Restart Podcast: Byron Au Yong

For more than two decades, composer and educator Byron Au Yong has created music that bridges performance, ritual and activism. His highly collaborative works have been presented by such varied institutions as the Seattle Symphony, BAM, the Smithsonian, the American Conservatory Theater and Nashville Opera.

Byron is also Associate Professor and Director of Arts Leadership at Seattle University, where he’s reimagining arts education as a space of equity, imagination and community. His teaching encourages artists to consider leading beyond or outside institutions and to learn from one another as collaborators in liberation.

In this episode of the Art Restart podcast, Byron reflects on how his art and teaching are both rooted in listening, whether it’s listening through the feet to the language of trees to compose his newest work or listening deeply to students and collaborators to imagine new, more equitable forms of leadership.