Media

HKU Composers Showcase – Featuring the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble

24 Mar 2011

 

The HKU Music Department is proud to present an evening concert featuring HKU Composers' new works and award-winning pieces at the Loke Yew Hall, The University of Hong Kong on 13 April, 2011 (Wed), 7:30 pm. A number of chamber works with different instrumentation and styles will be performed by the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble. An innovative programme performed by superb musicians will make this event a memorable evening.

Members of the media are cordially invited to cover the event. Details are as follows:

Date: April 13, 2011 (Wednesday)
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Loke Yew Hall, HKU                                                                       

Free Admission, first-come, first-served.

Programme:

Nirmali FENN                            The 5 Steps
LO Ting Cheung Daniel           Galactic Gala
YIP Ho Kwen Austin                   The Discourse Upon Warlords
WYLEGALA Hamabe Yoko        Gion Shoja
Joao Marcos MASCARENHAS   Reflected Marionettes No.1
TSE Tai Shun                             Sacred Drone

The programme features some of the most promising young composers of our day. Details of their works are as follows:

1) The 5 Steps by Nirmali Fenn: This is a music theatre piece steeped in ritual, where music and dance converge to express a correlation between the generative and degenerative processes that operate within nature and human life cycles. Nirmali Fenn is now a scholar at The Society of Scholars in the Humanities, HKU. A graduate of the Universities of New South Wales and Melbourne with highest honours and a recipient of a Clarendon Scholarship, she completed a doctorate at Oxford University. She sees music wholly as an expression of the observation of social interactions, and her compositions often deal with the concept of unifying divisions.

2) Galactic Gala by award-winning composer Daniel Lo (MPhil student): This piece was written for the piano, the drum set and the gamelan gong kebyar, three amazingly different instruments that display similar percussive features. Composed by Daniel Lo, the piece was awarded the third prize and a special prize at the International Antonín Dvořák Composition Competition in Prague. Recently, Daniel also won the first prize for his piece Sojourner's Song in the 2010-2011 Migratory Journeys International Composition Competition, a work that will be premiered at the Migratory Journeys World Premiere Concerts in early 2012.

3)     The Discourse Upon Warlords by Austin Yip (PhD student): this work was inspired by an excerpt in chapter 12 of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義), which depicts the conversation between the two protagonists, Cao Cao (曹操) and Liu Bei (劉備). Austin Yip graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a "high distinction in general scholarship", and is currently working on his doctorate at HKU. His works have been recently performed at ISCM 2010-Sydney (Australia), ACL 2010-Japan (Tokyo, Japan), the Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival 2010 (Indonesia), Shanghai Conservatory of Music New Music Week 2010, WOCMAT 2010, and Musicarama 2009 and 2010 (Hong Kong).

4)      Gion Shoja by Yoko Hamabe Wylegala (PhD student): The work was written as a flute solo piece, inspired by the opening stanza of a canon of Japanese literature known as The tale of Heike, which is set in the 12th Century. It features two melodies, one representing the human ego and the other a message from Budda, which intertwine with each other at a later stage. Wylegala wrote a piece Voyage (2010) for orchestra which was commissioned by the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra for its 2010 China Tour. Its performance at the Beijing Centre for the Performing Arts was broadcasted by CCTV.

5) Reflected Marionettes No. 1 by João Marcos Gomes Mascarenhas (PhD student): This piece portrays short episodes that take place in an imaginary world of marionettes. In this personal speculation, the stereotyped grotesqueness becomes sublime and the values are inverted in a world reflected through a marionette's mirror. Mascarenhas has obtained a bachelor of music degree in Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music (USA), and a master of music degree in Composition from the University of Missouri-Columbia (USA). His Brazilian Jazz Trio opened the Hong Kong International Jazz Festival in 2008. His multimedia work, Into the Music - Multimedia Étude no.1, was awarded the Rayson Huang Scholarship in Music 2009-2010 at HKU.

About the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble:

The Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (HKNME) is a chamber ensemble, formed in 2008. The HKNME presents the best new music in Hong Kong by local Hong Kong composers, Asian composers and also by important international figures. Its aim is to foster interesting interdisciplinary collaborations, and to present the highest quality contemporary music to Hong Kong audiences on a regular basis. In October 2008 members of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble were resident at the Shanghai Conservatory. Since 2009 the HKNME has presented regular concerts in Hong Kong, with tours of Mainland China, Malaysia (to the Malaysian Contemporary Music Festival) and Singapore. The HKNME was featured at the 2010 New Vision Arts Festival and in 2011 will tour Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia. For more details, go to http://www.hknme.org

For media enquiries, please contact Miss Phyllis Mak, Programme Manager, Faculty of Arts, HKU (Tel: 2859 8048 /email: kpmak@hku.hk ) or Ms Trinni Choy, Assistant Director (Media), External Relations Office, HKU (Tel: 2859 2606/email: pychoy@hku.hk)

For programme details, please visit www.hku.hk/music/concerts or 2859 7045