The Academy for Performing Arts honours the city’s great and good
Ahead of Tuesday’s HKAPA awards ceremony, Oliver Chou and Vivienne Chow meet the four newly minted honorary doctors, each of whom has made an invaluable contribution to the city’s cultural scene
Hong Kong may be first and foremost a business town, with celebrated tycoons and entrepreneurs, but the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) is trying to redress the balance a little by conferring honorary degrees on the great and the good of the performing arts world.
“It puts us up on a different pedestal, paying tribute to those contributing to the arts,” says Professor Adrian Walter, director of the HKAPA, on the eve of the 2014 Honorary Awards Ceremony.
“People may excel in their own field of art. But what we are constantly looking for is their sustained contributions to the performing arts in the community,” he says, “which may or may not directly benefit the academy.”
The HKAPA began conferring honorary fellowships in 1993 and the more prestigious honorary doctorates in 2006. To date, 98 fellowships (to artists such as actor Chow Yun-fat and pianist Lang Lang) and 27 doctorates (to the likes of casino tycoon Stanley Ho Hung-sun and film director Zhang Yimou) have been awarded. Four more in each category will be conferred on Tuesday, at a ceremony at the academy’s Lyric Theatre.
Collecting fellowships will be Cantonese opera/film star Pearl Chan Po-chu, Canto-pop lyricist Cheng Kok-kong, businesswoman Pansy Ho Chiu-king and Richard Pontzious, founder and music director of the Asian Youth Orchestra. This year’s honorary doctorate-designates, meanwhile, are film guru Raymond Chow Man-wai, veteran opera producer Lo King-man, theatrical expert Fredric Mao Chun-fai and film director Johnnie To Kei-fung; all profiled below.
The practice of conferring honorary degrees, according to Walter, former head of music at the Australian National University, is universal.