Chinary Ung has one of the most unusual backgrounds of any contemporary composer. Born in Takeo, Cambodia in 1942, he was not exposed to Western classical music until his late teens. His interest led him to be one of the first students at the newly opened music conservatory in Cambodia, where he studied the clarinet. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1964 to further his studies, receiving BM and MM degrees in clarinet and conducting from the Manhattan School of Music. He went on to obtain a DMA degree with distrinction from Columbia University where his principal teacher was Chou Wen-chung (also a Peters composer).

Scholars have remarked about Ung's strong sense of commitment to tradition, ingenuity, techniques and imagination. His music relies on his personality, in his refinement of his ideas expressed in lines, shades, perspective and time factors.

He has received numerous prizes, honors and commissions from such prestigious institutions as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Aeolian Chamber Ensemble, and the Guggenheim, Koussevitsky, Ford, Rockefeller and Barlow Foundations. In 1989 he received Grawemeyer and Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards.

Ung's music has been performed by numerous chamber ensembles including the New York New Music Ensemble and the Vermeer String Quartet, and his orchestral work INNER VOICES has been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, among others. His music has been recorded on the CRI, New World, Sony and London labels, and he has also annotated and featured his Cambodian xylophone (roneat-ek) playing on Folkways and Khmer Studies Institute labels.

Ung has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Arizona State University in Tempe, Khmer Studies Institute, Northern Illinois University, and is currently Professor of Composition at the University of California, San Diego.