South China Morning Post - Music

Closing the season with scale and grandeur on July 3, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra launched the audience onto the high seas with a programme anchored by Ralph Vaughan Williams’ rarely performed A Sea Symphony. The sprawling work has not been aired by the orchestra since the 1980s and it is a cantata, song cycle and oratorio rolled into one, each of its four movements set...

Camille Banzon’s journey to becoming a pioneer of the underground music scene in the Philippines was defined by necessity from the outset. A decade ago, when running a hostel on the island of Siargao, she learned the basics of DJing so she could play music at the parties she hosted. By the time she was forced to relocate to Manila in 2021 after a devastating typhoon, she was alr...

This is the 80th instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades. Surviving Hong Kong’s ruthless entertainment industry is a rare feat; doing so while wholly redefining your public image is nearly unprecedented. Yet, Charlene “Ah Sa” Choi Cheuk-yin has managed to do both. Debuting in 2001 as one half of the Cantopop duo Twins along...

The Hong Kong Sinfonietta was not playing it safe when it commissioned Alice Yeung’s double concerto for chromatic harmonica and jazz piano – a combination that may be a world first. Performed by the orchestra’s two new artist associates, the multi-genre mavericks Daniel Chu and CY Leo (real name Ho Cheuk-yin), Time (in-)Linear’s June 27 premiere was the highlight of an evening ...

It’s summer and the hills are alive with the sound of musicals. Never before have there been so many productions – from originals to tried and true favourites – being staged in Hong Kong in close succession. Here are nine that fans of this popular theatre genre should not miss. 1. Jesus Christ Superstar More than 55 years after it opened on Broadway, Jesus Christ Superstar is f...