City Hall Concert Hall Jul 3, 8pm; Jul 4, 2.30pm
What do mahjong and piano playing have in common? According to Gabriel Kwok Ka-tak, they are both excellent exercise for the brain.
The head of keyboard studies at the Academy for Performing Arts should know - he enjoys both in his spare time.
His love of mahjong and the piano has inspired a new piece composed by pianist and academy music graduate Julie Kuok Pun-man, to be performed at two fund-raising concerts this weekend as 50 top local pianists gather to celebrate the academy's 25th anniversary.
Mahjong on Stage! is a piano piece for eight hands dedicated to Kwok, who first tutored Kuok 20 years ago. She will perform the piece with Cheng Wai, Hui Ling and Ma Cong. They will play in front of a video featuring a game of mahjong played by Kuok, Kwok and two other academy alumni, Shum Kin-wai and Cheng Kwok-kuen.
'This is a humorous and descriptive piece of music depicting the playing of mahjong among four people,' Kuok (above with Kwok) says. 'The opening section starts with sounds that imitate the shuffling of tiles, the throwing of the dice and the calls for matching the tiles.