Ching's Piano Concerto, commissioned by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, had its well-received premiere, performed by
Craig Bohmler, in 1997. The
San Jose Mercury wrote, "The concerto has the kind of instant appeal to listeners that every composer must dream of.... When it was finished, the crowd rose in a spontaneous ovation." The concerto was recorded and released on the orchestra’s first commercial CD. The San Jose Chamber Orchestra subsequently also commissioned and premiered his
Psyche and Eros, a 45-minute composition for narrator and string orchestra, written in collaboration with storyteller
Margaret Wolfson, in 2000.
Metro Silicon Valley analysed the music in great depth, concluding that "[T]he technique is adroit, fluid and winningly integrated. Ching speaks music so well that he accommodates the text without a stumble.... [T]he music stands remarkably well on its own – rather like a string of pearls.... Ching might well be tempted to craft a concert suite without the transitional material." The work's additional venues have included the
Abu Dhabi Music & Art Festival and the
Lincoln Center Summer Institute program in
West Memphis.
Operas 1985–1999 Ching is best known for his operas. He provided his own libretti for his first two operas:
Levees (1980), a New Orleans vampire story performed at Duke University; and
Cocks Must Crow (1985), based on a
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings short story and performed at Greater Miami Opera. His early miniature opera
Leo: Opera in One Cat is a jazz-based 15-minute one-act opera about a man fighting with his cat,
Texas Monthly called it "a pleasant diversion but such an assured one that the Miami-based composer's talent glitters all over it." His fourth opera,
Cue 67, a one-act 35-minute contemporary murder-mystery ghost story set in a theater, was commissioned and premiered at
Virginia Opera in 1992, paired in a double bill with
Gian Carlo Menotti's
The Medium. It contains an eclectic blend of musical styles from opera to rock 'n' roll, pop music, and Broadway-type tunes, and the libretto is by Sandra Bernhard. Beginning in 1993, Ching wrote two related one-act operas with songwriter
Hugh Moffatt. The first,
King of the Clouds (1993), deals with alcoholism and broken families, and the second,
Out of the Rain (1998), explores contemporary topics such as social pressure, teen suicide, and AIDS.
King of the Clouds was commissioned and premiered by
Dayton Opera, and
Out of the Rain was commissioned jointly by
Opera Delaware, the Kansas City Lyric Opera, and
Opera Memphis, and premiered by Opera Delaware. Both operas, separately and together, have received numerous productions, including high-school productions. Ching's opera ''Buoso's Ghost'' is a comedic sequel to
Puccini's one-act comic opera
Gianni Schicchi. It had its first full staging with the
Pittsburgh Opera in 1996, and its official premiere at Opera Memphis in 1997. Starting where
Gianni Schicchi ends, the new opera, with a libretto by the composer, In reviewing the work the
Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "''Buoso's Ghost
soared .... [it] offered highly charged acting atop a deft, tuneful score.... Ching, General/Artistic Director of Opera Memphis, studied with Robert Ward and Carlisle Floyd, and the unashamed flow of natural, singing melody ... reflects the profile of his teachers." And the Chicago Tribune reported that "Composer and librettist Ching ... borrows snatches of Puccini tunes and weaves them into his own conservative-eclectic idiom, tossing in bits of American pop ... for merry measure. The vocal writing is expert, the orchestration light enough to allow the singers to project the text clearly. Buoso
is charming and unpretentious ...." Opera News noted that Ching uses "a more modern musical mode, yet avoiding excessive atonality. The score subtly introduces brief tongue-in-cheek quotations from other works, ranging from Mozart to Sondheim, plus one unmistakable interjection of Shostakovich." The work has been performed throughout the U.S. as an ideal pairing with Gianni Schicchi'', the most popular of Puccini's three
Il trittico one-act operas. Ching also supplied his own libretto to his one-act opera
Faith, based on the short story of the same title by award-winning science-fiction author
James Patrick Kelly. The opera follows the story of the titular character, a divorced and depressed woman who meets a man via a personal ad, discovers he talks to plants, and begins to fall in love again. Kelly said of the opera, "You get good reviews, you win an award, but there's no feeling quite so wonderful as having another artist interpret your work supremely well. There are giant chunks of narrative [Ching] just set to music which is different ... for opera ... much more colloquial and approachable. This man transformed my piece into something equally, if not more, wonderful." The opera was commissioned by OperaFest of New Hampshire, and premiered there in April 1999,
2000–2012 Ching's three-act opera
Corps of Discovery, his third collaboration with Hugh Moffatt, was commissioned by the
University of Missouri for the bicentennial of the
Lewis and Clark Expedition. The full work had its world premiere in May 2003. In addition to full productions at the University of Missouri, Opera Memphis,
Opera America's 2003 convention,
Washington State University,
University of Idaho, and elsewhere, Ching also toured the piece with Fargo-Moorhead Opera, using a piano and violin as accompaniment, throughout North Dakota, including some of the locations the expedition stopped at. Memphis's
Tri-State Defender deemed the work an "epic success"; its review of the "enthusiastically received" work noted that "The years of preparation, study, writing, composing, editing and creating that were required to produce this panoramic and worthy opera is mind-boggling." The review found the score "monumental", "masterful", "magnificent and often haunting". His next opera, an adaptation of Shakespeare's ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream, is an entirely a cappella'' work, with the musical accompaniment, including the percussion, sung by a "voicestra" of 15 to 20 voices. The inspiration for the work came when he was invited to become the vocal coach for DeltaCappella, a contemporary a cappella group founded in Memphis in 2007. Ching retrospectively noted, "Their devotion to detail and their joy of singing was palpable and infectious. There was something jaw-droppingly giddy about the whole enterprise. With no reeds, no mouthpieces, no strings, no sticks, the variety of sounds they were capable of making was virtually unlimited. By the end of my first rehearsal with them I was hooked and eager to apply this new sonic palette to opera." After conducting
Marcus Hummon's Shakespeare-filled
Surrender Road, he reflected that "with its potential for three sonic worlds inhabited by the Athenians, the fairies, the rude mechanicals,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream seemed a perfect vehicle for exploring a colorful prism of a cappella styles." The opera debuted in 2011 at
Playhouse on the Square, in collaboration with Opera Memphis, with roles sung by musical-theater singers and professional opera singers. It was also performed at OperaHub in
Boston in 2012. The
Wall Street Journal praised ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', stating that "Ching's remarkably inventive opera is a celebration of what voices can do and still, with the exception of a few startling vocal percussion effects, sound like voices." The review noted Ching's "seamless changes in tone, ... fine sense of pacing and skill with ensemble writing" and "tonal and tuneful vocal lines ... written for maximum intelligibility". The reviewer found the voicestra's part remarkable in that it "supports the singers on the stage, its overlapping lines and syllables weaving around them, amplifying their characters and conflicts, sometimes echoing their words (or even their thoughts), or supplying atmosphere. The voicestra gives the opera an added human dimension ...." The
Recorded A Cappella Review Board reviewed the work, noting that
Slaying the Dragon, Ching's fact-based 2012 opera, explores intolerance and redemption, and was inspired by the 1990s true story
Not by the Sword by Kathryn Watterson. The two-act opera's libretto is by
Ellen Frankel, and it was premiered in June 2012 by
Philadelphia's
Center City Opera Theater, which commissioned the work. The opera is the story of a
Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon whose life is transformed by the friendship and kindness of a local rabbi and his wife. The man renounces his Klan association and begins to speak out publicly for tolerance; his terminal illness eventually incapacitates him and he moves into the rabbi's home, converting to Judaism before dying. The score balances the dark themes of bigotry and intolerance with an eclectic variety of ethnic music including Yiddish folk songs, Vietnamese children’s songs, Jewish sacred music, Aryan rock, Broadway scores, gospel music, and country-western tunes.
2013–2023 Speed Dating Tonight!, a comic opera in one act, was commissioned and premiered in 2013 by the Janiec Opera of the
Brevard Music Center. Ching supplied his own libretto for the piece, and the opera for up to 45 singers or more can be adapted for varying numbers of singers, voice types, gender ratios, and length of time, by cutting, re-ordering, or transposing the keys of the vignettes. Additional 2013–2014 production venues included Amarillo Opera,
Southern Utah University,
Ithaca College,
University of Central Florida, Microscopic Opera (Pittsburgh), Poor Richard's Opera (Philadelphia), and elsewhere, and it has been cited as "the most-performed American opera within a year of its premiere". In 2017 he premiered
Anna Hunter, the Spirit of Savannah, another opera commissioned by the Savannah VOICE Festival. It is a one-act opera about historic preservation in 1950s' Savannah, and Ching wrote his own libretto. While he was composer-in-residence for Savannah VOICE Festival, Ching was also commissioned for a third opera,
Birthday Clown, a short comic opera paired with
I Pagliacci which premiered August 2019. For Palm Springs Opera Guild of the Desert, in
Palm Springs, California, Ching wrote
Thriver, also known as
Thrivers, a one-act opera specifically for adolescent voices about overcoming teen depression. It premiered in January 2019. In June 2019, his
Utah Opera–commissioned short opera
Completing the Picture premiered, with a libretto by Victoria Bourns which references the fact that none of the 20,000 Chinese workers who built the western portion of the
Transcontinental Railroad were in the famous 1869 photograph of the
Golden Spike at the railroad's completion. Ching wrote his own libretto for the one-act
Remove Shoes Before Entering (RSBE), which, like
Speed Dating Tonight!, is another
modular opera in which each cast member has a showcase aria and the modules or vignettes can be re-arranged or dropped, and new modules can be created specific to a performance venue. This was right before
COVID-19 lockdowns, and subsequent planned performances at other venues that year were dropped. Heartland Opera Theatre, Taos Opera Institute,
Kennesaw State University,
Charlottesville Opera, and the
Chicago College of Performing Arts at
Roosevelt University. The plot of the opera involves students who visit a mysterious abandoned rural building, and experience memories and revelations – some of them happy or triumphant, and some sad, dark, or intense. The opera, inspired by
Boccaccio's
The Decameron's Day 5, Story 10, concerns a wealthy businessman and his trophy wife who are both unfulfilled in their marriage and clandestinely search internet dating sites for extra-marital partners. The three-act work,
Notes on Viardot, premiered at the university in April 2024, conducted by Ching. The story is told in flashbacks as a journalist interviews Viardot near the end of her life, and within Ching's original compositions the music weaves in songs and melodies from Viardot's own compositions plus arias she sang during her career. In 2025,
Northern State University premiered his
Hazel Miner, with a libretto by Marla Fogderud, based on a young woman from North Dakota who sacrificed herself to save her siblings in a horrific blizzard. ==Selected works==