This show features works by five of Hong Kong’s hottest up-and-coming composers, performed by local recorder ensemble L’Art du Bois. Coupled with local composer Lam Lai’s setting of Mao Zedong’s quotations, innovative New York composer Neil Rolnick will join the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble for an electrifying evening of music making.

Program:

· Austin YIP: Hong Kong Island Timelapse (2010)

· LAM Lan-chee: Wave (2010)

· LEUNG Chin-hin: Feng Qing Yun Dan (2009)

· LAM Fung: A Lyrical Moment (2010), A Blissful Moment (2010)

· CHEN Yeung-ping: Bumble Canon (2009)

· Austin YIP: The Kueen (2010)

· Lam Lai (Hong Kong): Mao's Song, for electronics, text and video

· Works by Neil Rolnick (USA), including Fiddle Faddle for violin and electronics, Making Light of It (for tenor and computer) and live laptop performance

Performers:

Law Kin-pong/ Lam Lai
L’Art du Bois (Recorder Ensemble)
Hong Kong New Music Ensemble
Neil Rolnick (Laptop, composer)

- Tickets are at $120 (standard) and $80 (concession) for the event, ticket includes one drink.

- For bookings and enquiries please contact Nancy Chua at 2537 0688 or email to nancychua@osagegallery.com
 

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Lam Lai, Composer/ Performer
Born in Hong Kong, LAM Lai is studying her Bachelor Degree in The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, major in composition and electronic music, studying with LAW Wing-fai and Clarence Mak. Her compositions of different genres include Orchestral work, traditional chamber, mixed chinese and western ensembles, electronic music, electro acoustic music and multimedia productions were performed in public. In 2008, she received The Lions & Joseph Koo Music Foundation Scholarship and went for the exchange trip in Taiwan. She visited numbers of universities and presented her compositions in the seminars. In 2009, she also received the Scholarships of the Society of the Academy for Performing Arts and The Lions & Joseph Koo Music Foundation for her study. Apart from presenting her compositions in concerts, LAM also composed film music for YMCA’s Foundation of Youth Self-Realization Scheme. She is active in promoting contemporary music to public, in 2010 February, her commissioned work of the Creator of Music Performance Organization (COMPO), The Neon Lantern, was performed in foyer of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

Neil Rolnick, Composer/ Performer
Since he moved to New York City in 2002, Neil Rolnick’s music has been receiving increasingly wide recognition and numerous performances both in the US and abroad. A pioneer in the use of computers in performance, beginning in the late 1970s, Rolnick has often included unexpected and unusual combinations of materials and media in his music. He has performed around the world, and his music has appeared on 13 CD’s.

Though much of Rolnick’s work has been in areas which connect music and technology, and is therefore considered in the realm of “experimental” music, his music has always been highly melodic and accessible. Whether working with electronic sounds, improvisation, or multimedia, his music has been characterized by critics as “sophisticated”, “hummable and engaging” and as having “good senses of showmanship and humor”.

Works completed in 2007 include Hammer & Hair for violinist Todd Reynolds and pianist Kathleen Supové; Love Songs for the Albany Symphony, with soloists Theo Bleckmann and Todd Reynolds; and The Bridge for the Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire ensemble. In 2006 Rolnick completed the iFiddle Concerto for the American Composers Orchestra, with soloist Todd Reynolds, which was premiered in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York. In 2006 he also wrote Uptown Jump for the trio MAYA, and Segal’s Billboard for harpist Jacquiline Kerrod, and Innova Recordings released his 13th CD, Digits, which received enthusiastic reviews in the New York Times and in Time Out New York.

Rolnick teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, where he was founding director of the iEAR Studios.

L’Art du Bois (Recorder Ensemble)
L’Art du Bois is a recorder consort established in 2005 by several local performers of the instrument. The group comprises members graduating from the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague, Utrecht Conservatoire, Northwestern University, Hong Kong University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Since then, the group has played in various venues for different groups of audience.

Since their first public performance, the group has always been exploring a wider repertoire from the Medieval period, through the Renaissance and the Baroque, to the 20th century, experimenting the combination of a wide range of instruments from the sopranino to the great bass; and, at the same time, experiencing the magic of tone quality in ensemble playing. They also demonstrate the various combinations of instruments, playing a variety of trio, quartet, quintet, sextet and septet pieces. Recently, the group has also started investigating the recruitment of various other instruments, for example, crumhorns, hand drums and the sackbut, so as to enrich the colours of its recital programmes.

In October 2009, the group accepted the invitation from the Hong Kong Institute of Education to be the Artists-in-Residence of the school year.