11 July 2011

Yoko Hamabe Wylegala's latest composition Bhaisajya-guru・薬師如来 for solo flute was recently performed on 9 and 10 of July 2011 at Yakushiji temple in the ancient city of Nara, Japan. The commissioned work was dedicated to Yakushi Nyorai (Healing Buddha) at the Yakushiji temple. Wylegala is currently completing her Ph.D. in composition in the Department of Music.

30 June 2011

Daniel Lo Ting-cheung, M.Phil. candidate in composition in the Department of Music, was one of the winners of the Call for Scores Project organized by the Grammy Award-winning Orchestra of Our Time. His work Colors of the Night for flute, contrabass, piano, and two percussion will be rehearsed and recorded by the ensemble later this year.

Third-year undergraduate Gordon Fung Dic-lun's new work And the Strings Resound… was premiered in April in Zagreb, Croatia, by HRT Tamburitza Orchestra as part of ISCM 2011. Fung will attend Atlas Academy 2011 as a composer in the Netherlands in August 2011.

21 April 2011

Yoko Hamabe Wylegala, Ph.D. candidate in composition in the Department of Music, received an ASCAP PLUS Award (Concert Music Division) for the fourth consecutive year. The award was sponsored by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

15 February 2011

Daniel Lo Ting-cheung, M.Phil. candidate in composition in the Department of Music, was awarded first place in the student division of the 2010-2011 Migratory Journeys International Composition Competition on the merit of his recent work, Sojourner's Song, for pipa, flute, contrabass, piano, and two percussion. The piece will be premiered at the Migratory Journeys World Premiere Concerts in early 2012.

Gordon Fung Dic-lun, third-year undergraduate in the Department of Music, was also awarded an Honorable Mention in the competition for his work And the Ancient Tune Resounds for Chinese sheng, dizi, piano, and percussion.

11 November 2010

After attending the Darmstadt Summer Institute, Ph.D. composition student Yip Ho Kwen Austin participated in the First Asian Art & Culture Workshop in Gwangju, Korea, where he also gave a presentation on cross-cultural exchanges at the Asia Culture Forum 2010.

Recent performances of his works include Vox Humana's rendition of his a cappella piece Lu Chai at the ACL Asian Music Festival 2010 in Tokyo; Jin Se for soprano and piano at the Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival 2010; Pi for violin, clarinet, and piano by Ensemble Duo Plus at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music New Music Week 2010; Resonance of the Cornerless for solo tam tam by Four Gig Heads at Musicarama 2010 in Hong Kong; and his electronic work Hong Kong Island Timelapse at WOCMAT 2010 in Taiwan.

22 August 2010

Daniel Lo Ting-cheung, M.Phil. candidate in composition in the Department of Music, was recently awarded third prize in the Junior Category and a special prize for best chamber music in the International Antonín Dvořák Composition Competition.

11 August 2010

Manolete Mora has recently been commissioned to work on UNESCO's "Gompas and Markets: Safeguarding the Legacy of Tibetan Culture" in collaboration with the Plateau Music Project. Dr. Mora will spend up to four weeks in Tibet with UNESCO's anthropological research team. He has been a consultant for various UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage projects in Southeast Asia over the last few years.

9 July 2010

The HKU Gamelan, directed by Manolete Mora, performed at the Shanghai World Expo Music Festival 2010 in early July. The Festival included invited ensembles from the world's top universities, including Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and Imperial College London. The HKU gamelan was joined by two guest artists from Bali, Alit Adi Putra and Ngurah Suardika. Many of the students participating in the Shanghai performances have recently returned from an annual field trip to Bali where they studied gamelan gong kebyar and other art forms for two weeks under the guidance of Balinese musicians and Manolete Mora.

2 July 2010

Yoko Hamabe Wylegala's new work Voyage was featured in the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra's 2010 China tour. Wylegala's overture combines Chinese and Celtic themes and was commissioned by the orchestra for the tour. Performances were given at the Shanghai Grand Theatre (6 July 2010), Suzhou Cultural Arts Centre (7 July), Changchun Concert Hall (8 July), and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing (10 & 11 July). The Beijing performances were broadcast across China on CCTV and Beijing TV. Wylegala is currently a Ph.D. candidate in composition in the Department of Music.

11 March 2010

The Cheung Chau Bun Festival: A Hong Kong Soundscape Study is a new database which preserves the sounds that emerged from the Cheung Chau Bun Festival between 30 April and 3 May 2009. Many of the sounds produced during the Festival are not normally heard during the rest of the year. Aside from providing a permanent record of the soundscape of this important cultural event for the people of Cheung Chau, and Hong Kong, more generally, the project also aims to provide a sound databank of the Festival for research and teaching purposes.

The research project was made possible through the support of the Kwan Fong Endowment Fund. The documentation and research was produced by a team led by Dr Manolete Mora and included postgraduate students from the Department of Music, namely, Daniel Kam, Law Ho Chak, Michael Leung, David Leung, Mui Yee Man, Ng King Pan, Juliette Simms, Wang Shuang, and Austin Yip.

18 December 2009

Yoko Hamabe Wylegala, Ph.D. candidate in composition in the Department of Music, is one of this year's ASCAPLUS Award recipients (concert music division). The award is sponsored by ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). Her recent composition, Fantasia Inca, was also selected for the international award-winning composers' concert sponsored by the Southeast Chapter of NACUSA (National Association of Composers / USA).

3 December 2009

Giorgio Biancorosso has been granted the Outstanding Young Researcher Award under HKU's 2009 award scheme. The highly-coveted award is made to researchers of distinction across all faculties. This year seven were chosen amongst a competitive field of applicants. The award comes with a monetary award for two years and a postgraduate studentship to support the awardee's research and development. The award presentation ceremony will be held on 28 January 2010 in the Rayson Huang Theatre. The Communication and Public Affairs Office (CPAO) will also produce a commemorative brochure on the occasion.

24 October 2009

Manolete Mora recently convened a symposium on the "Politics and Poetics of Asian Intangible Cultural Heritage." The Symposium was co-organized by the Centre for Anthropological Research (Social Sciences) and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (Arts) with the assistance of the School of Humanities.

China has 29 cultural practices listed on UNESCO's Intangible Heritage list, including the Guzin, and in October 2009 Cantonese Opera was inscribed on The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Given the significance of UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage project to China's efforts to revive and maintain endangered musical traditions, the Symposium provided an opportunity for leading international specialists to discuss the complex issues associated with Intangible Cultural Heritage.

22 October 2009

Giorgio Biancorosso recently presented "Music as Anamorphic Spot: The Radio Broadcast in Kurosawa's Tengoku to Jigoku" at Columbia University, sponsored by the East Asian Languages and Cultures and Music Departments, and at Stanford University as the Ron Alexander Memorial Lectures in Musicology. Biancorosso also visited the University of California, Berkeley campus, where he read a paper on Wong Kar-wai's cinema at the Center for Chinese Studies and gave a lecture on film music in the Department of Music.

17 June 2009

The inaugural issue of Musica Humana is now available in print. Musica Humana is an international, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of music as the mental, communicational, and socio-cultural product of human activities. Three of our music faculty members are leading its editorial work: Youn Kim as Editor, Giorgio Biancorosso as Board Member and Review Editor, and Daniel Chua as a member of the Advisory Board. The journal sets its sight on an integrated and comprehensive approach to music rather than committing itself to a specific, specialized, or focused area of study. The journal also aims to provide a venue for the trans-continental exchange of ideas and a fostering of research collaboration.

The first issue contains articles by leading musicologists, including Nicholas Cook, Professor of Music at Cambridge University and one of the founders of the Department of Music here at HKU. The second issue will be dedicated to the memory of Leonard B. Meyer (1918-2007).

15 June 2009

Youn Kim's History of Western Music Theory (2006, printed in Korean) was recently awarded one of the "Outstanding Books in the Field of Basic Sciences" by The National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Korea. The book examines various Western music theoretical writings and systems from approximately the sixteenth century to the present, but instead of following the chronological sequence it takes a thematic approach by examining the history of music theory through several recurring ideas or models, such as "nature," "number," and "science."

30 April 2009

Steven Feld, eminent musician, writer, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and documentary sound artist conducted a Hong Kong-based soundscape project with postgraduate students and Manolete Mora from 8-16 May 2009. Under Feld's guidance, the students participated in ethnographic and soundscape field research, learnt techniques of field recording, collected high quality sound data, and processed, analysed, and interpreted the collected data.

Feld also presented a talk entitled Birds to Bells, Toads to Car Horns: Listening in to Acoustemologies in New Guinea, Europe, and Africa 1976-2009 on 14 May 2009 at the McAulay Studio, Hong Kong Arts Centre.

9 April 2009

Daniel Chua, Professor of Music and Head of the School of Humanities, recently hosted An Evening with Evgeny Kissin on the eve of Kissin being conferred the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa by The University of Hong Kong. During the lively discussion, Kissin shared his musical experiences from early childhood through his eminent career as one of Russia's foremost pianists.

16 December 2008

Chan Hing-yan receives commendation for "Persons with Outstanding Contributions to the Development of Arts and Culture" in the Secretary for Home Affairs' Commendation Scheme 2008. Launched in 2002, the Scheme aims to honour those who have made significant contributions in the areas of community building, social services, sports and recreation, as well as arts and culture.

8 December 2008

Giorgio Biancorosso recently presented "Songs of Delusion: Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels" at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Nashville. He has been invited to read another paper on the same topic at the conference "Sounds Chinese," an international meeting on sound and material culture in China, which will be held at the National University of Singapore on 15-17 December 2008. His research on the role of music in Wong Kar-wai's cinema will culminate in the publication of an essay in Popular Music and the Post-MTV Auteur, edited by Arved Ashby for Oxford University Press.

17 June 2008

Musicologist Daniel Chua joins HKU as Head of the School of Humanities and Professor of Music. Chua comes to Hong Kong from King's College London, where he was Professor in Music Theory and Analysis. Although mostly known as a Beethoven scholar, Chua's research is diverse, ranging from Monteverdi to Stravinsky. He is currently working on the ethics of freedom in the music of Beethoven.

18 April 2008

Frederick Lau, Visiting Professor in the Department of Music (2007-2008), recently published a new book entitled Music in China: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford University Press, 2008). Lau is a Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, and is currently researching music of pre- and post-colonial Hong Kong.  

26 March 2008

Chan Hing-yan has been awarded the Hong Kong Dance Award 2008 by the Hong Kong Dance Alliance (HKDA) for his original score for the City Contemporary Dance Company's production of Warrior Lanling last year. The award acknowledges significant contributions to the art of dance in Hong Kong, and will be presented at the HKDA’s Awards Presentation and Performance Gala held at the Kwai Tsing Theatre on 2 April 2008.

Chan has just completed his latest work And the Moon Winks... for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Scored for a Western orchestra and two huqin soloists, the work was commissioned by the internationally-acclaimed huqin master Wong On-yuen. And the Moon Winks... will be premiered on 11 April 2008 at the City Hall Concert Hall, and will be repeated the following evening.

22 January 2008

"The Piano" is a new course taught by Dr. Giorgio Biancorosso tracing the history of the piano through a montage of lectures that focus on the personalities, repertories, and social and cultural milieus which provided the context for its extraordinary rise as arguably the most important instrument in the history of Western classical music. The course will feature a lecture demonstration by Eva Lue on 24 January 2008, and a colloquia and lecture on Glenn Gould by the eminent Canadian scholar Carl Morey on 20 and 21 February 2008 respectively.

18 September 2007

Chan Hing-yan, Associate Professor in the Department of Music, has just completed the musical score Warrior Lanling for the City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC). Performed live by an ensemble that fuses instruments from East and West, Warrior Lanling is CCDC’s most anticipated production for 2007. Warrior Lanling will receive its premiere on 5 Oct 2007 at the Kwai Tsing Theatre, and will be repeated the following night.

1 September 2007

Musicologist Youn Kim recently joined the Department as an Assistant Professor. Kim obtained her Ph.D. from Columbia University and taught at Seoul National University prior to joining HKU. Her research interests include the history of Western music theory, music cognition, music theory and analysis, and the relationship between psychology, science, and music theory during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has published a monograph, History of Western Music Theory (2006), and a number of articles and reviews in Journal of the Musicological Society of Korea and Current Musicology, amongst others. She is active in the international academic community and was recently appointed editor-in-chief of Musica Humana, a newly-founded international journal in musicology.

21 June 2007

Joshua Chan, Associate Professor in the Department of Music, was commended by the HKSAR Government in the Secretary for Home Affairs' Commendation Scheme 2007 for "Persons with Outstanding Contributions to the Development of Arts and Culture."

7 March 2007

Giorgio Biancorosso, Assistant Professor in the Department of Music, joins Hong Kong's new cultural magazine MUSE as a music critic and feature writer. His critique of the Hong Kong Arts Festival appears in the magazine's inaugural issue (Feb 2007), while his article on Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette can be found in the March issue.

28 February 2007

Georg Predota, Assistant Professor in the Department of Music, Octavian Society Fellow, and curator of the Paul Wittgenstein Archive in Hong Kong, recently presented an invited lecture at the Neue Galerie / Museum for German and Austrian Art in New York. His talk drew philosophical and artistic connections between the exhibition of Josef Hoffmann interiors and the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, performed by Gary Graffman and the Shanghai Quartet in the Museum's Café Sabarsky.

21 February 2007

Joshua Chan, Associate Professor in the Department of Music, was elected as the incoming Chairman of the Asian Composers League (ACL) at the 26th ACL Conference and Festival held in February 2007 in Wellington, New Zealand. Chan is the first Hong Kong composer to chair the ACL, which was established in 1973 by leading composers of the Asia-Pacific region to promote contemporary music and foster cultural exchange.

21 September 2006

Department of Music postgraduate student, Yang Yuanzheng, joins Princeton University as a Visiting Fellow for 2006/07 after winning an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, Outstanding Research Postgraduate Student Award, and Li Ka Shing Prize.

8 September 2006

Wendy Wong, an M.Phil. student from the Department of Music, has been awarded a Starr Foundation Scholarship from the Institute of International Education in the United States. The scholarship covers all her educational costs for the academic year 2005/06.

20 May 2006

Department of Music M.Phil. graduates Samson Young and Angela Kang pursue Ph.D.s at Princeton and Nottingham Universities respectively. Both were awarded full funding and tuition waivers by their respective institutions.