His music has been commissioned and performed by leading groups Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Yarn/Wire, AMOC*, Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and many others. In 2015–17, he was the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow with The Cleveland Orchestra. He is the recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2012 Rome Prize, and he received First Prize at the 2008 Dutilleux Competition.

Upcoming premieres in fall 2024 include works for the Parker Quartet with Fleur Barron, JACK Quartet, Jennifer Koh, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Cheung’s recordings include five portrait discs: All Roads (New Focus, 2022), Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions (Kairos, 2022), Cycles and Arrows (New Focus, 2018), Dystemporal (Wergo, 2016), and Roundabouts (Ensemble Modern Medien, 2014). His music and performances have also appeared on Warner Classics (performed by Bertrand Chamayou), Tzadik, and Mode. As a performer and advocate for new music, he was a co-founder, pianist, and artistic director of the Talea Ensemble.

Cheung received a B.A. in Music and History from Harvard and a doctorate from Columbia University, and he was a Junior Fellow at Harvard. He previously taught at the University of Chicago and is an Associate Professor of Music at Brown University, where he teaches on topics ranging from theory and composition to the jazz orchestra and Asian musical modernism.