Concert 1: Lecture-Demonstration Concert on Hong Kong Composers' Works
Date: 10 November 2006 (Friday)
Venue: Cultural Activities Hall
Six chamber works by Hong Kong composers will be performed. Each performance is preceded by a 10-minute demonstration in which the composer and performing musicians will introduce to the audience interesting aspects of the composition process and interpretation. Besides talking and showing technical notes through projection, short excerpts and selected parts, alternative writing or interpretation will be performed in the demonstration. The audiences are also encouraged to ask questions or propose ad-hoc suggestions. The composers will be happy to receive feedback and they can also share their artistic views with such questions. Hopefully, this will encourage some meaningful interaction between the three parties: composer, performer and listener. As such, this is much more than a regular concert; the audience will also get to know the composers and performers, and their methods in making music. In order to provide the audience with a broader sense of what music creativity can offer, the instrumentation of these six chamber works would vary greatly, and 9 musicians are involved. The duration of each piece is around 6 to 10 minutes. The programme of which will to be confirmed later after we have sent out the Call for Scores.
Concert 2: Nancy Loo Piano Recital on Chinese Composers' Music
Date: 26 January 2007 (Friday)
Venue: Auditorium
Over 150,000 students take part in the annual Hong Kong Schools Music Festivals in recent years. A lot of them are pianists. One of the categories of the piano competitions is the Class of Chinese Composers' Piano Music. Students tend not to have much idea of the repertoire as they do not have many opportunities to hear Chinese piano music performed live. We aim to enlighten them (& the general public) with an interesting repertoire. Besides pieces by Doming Lam and Chan Pui-fang, distinguished pianist Nancy Loo will perform many creative works by the Mainland and Hong Kong composers. Some of the works have innovative performing techniques or manner.
Concert 3: Concert on Huqin Quartet (Singapore), LASO Plucked and others
Date: 2 February 2007 (Saturday)
Venue: Cultural Activities Hall
The Huqin Quartet (consisting of gaohu, erhu, zhonghu and gehu) from Singapore is the first of this kind professionally set up in the world. With their outstanding performing standard, they have enjoyed great success in Singapore and overseas concert tours (in USA, New Zealand and Japan). They have not performed in Hong Kong since their establishment in 2000. This concert will provide a good opportunity for the Hong Kong audience to meet this interesting group of dedicated musicians who are very keen on performing new works. The newly formed local plucked-string quartet LASO Plucked (liuqin, yangqin, zhongruan and lairuan, established in 2001) will provide the best contrast to the huqin quartet. The concert programme will consists of newly written pieces for these two quartets, respectively, with one commissioned work written for the combined ensemble (octet). Other local musicians (pianist, wind players, etc.) will join the concert to provide instrumentation variety.
Concert 4: Concert on Modern Symphonic Wind Band Music by Hong Kong Wind Philharmonia
Date: 2 March 2007 (Friday)
Venue: Auditorium
The first musical instruments most Hong Kong children learn nowadays are piano and violin. This culture seems to be established on basis of stereotype convention rather than artistic creativity necessarily. We believe wind and brass music, especially those written in contemporary styles, possesses some excellent qualities worth promoting. This concert will be a showcase of exclusively modern music written by both international and local composers. Although the 30-piece ensemble Hong Kong Wind Philharmonia is well known and active performing in Hong Kong, this concert will be the first of this kind given by them.
Concert 5: Showcase of Training-Class Participants' Compositions
Date: 16 March 2007 (Friday)
Venue: Cultural Activities Hall
Among the participants who take part in the eight training classes, the best 6 pieces of their final projects will be selected for performance. This will be a great encouragement for these new composers because they will learn a lot from the experience of producing the score and parts, participating in the rehearsals, receiving comments from the musicians, hearing their works performed live by professionals, and receiving comments from people in the audience. These six pieces will be selected by a jury of experienced composers of the Hong Kong Composers' Guild. The actual programme and instrumentation are unknown yet; they depend on the results of the selection. In order to provide the audience greater listening variety, we would try to select pieces written for different instrumental forces. The programme will require approximately 9 musicians. To further enhance the programme, one of two works by famous composers will also be performed.
Founded in 1983, the Hong Kong Composers' Guild is a professional association of serious composers with objectives to promote and cultivate music composition in Hong Kong. The current membership figure is 80. Apart from organizing concerts, publishing scores and producing recordings of works by Hong Kong composers, the Guild also takes an active part in arousing interest in composition especially amongst youths and in developing music as a vital creative art form in Hong Kong. It has also established strong links with many international organizations such as the Asian Composers' League and the International Society for Contemporary Music, and has played a significant role in international musical exchanges. With the leadership of the former and present Chairmen Doming Lam (1973-1983), Richard Tsang (1983-1993), Chan Wing-wah (1993-2004) and Joshua Chan (2004 -), the Guild & its predecessor (Hong Kong Section of ACL) have hosted many major cultural events internationally as well as locally in the last 32 years.