Many electronica fans probably regard classical music as a little tedious and definitely uncool - but one of the city's leading musicians plans to switch a few hipsters on to Bach & Co.
Anthony Wong Yiu-ming - a member of popular 1980s duo Tat Ming Pair - is combining contemporary electronica with classical music for a four-night concert series called Bauhinian Rhapsody at the Hong Kong Coliseum next week.
'I think all music comes from classical,' says Wong, founder of production house People Mountain People Sea. 'We want to bring the old world and advanced technology together.'
The concerts have been organised with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HKPO), and will feature Simon Kenway (co-musical director of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge) as conductor and People Mountain People Sea composer-producer Gaybird Leung Kei-cheuk as musical director.
Unlike the HKPO's annual Canto-pop concerts, which have featured the likes of Sandy Lam Yik-lin, Jacky Cheung Hok-yau, Alan Tam Wing-lun and Hacken Lee Hak-kan, this production isn't simply an 80-member orchestra playing pop tunes. It's an integration of orchestral music and electronic sound effects. 'I can't say that no one has done this before, but it hasn't been tried in Hong Kong,' says Wong. 'It's quite difficult.'
One unique feature of the shows is that every performer, including the conductor, will have to follow computer-generated signals. 'This is quite an ambitious project,' Wong says. 'Unlike the previous collaborations between the HKPO and pop artists, we're using a lot of computer programming. We weren't sure if it was going to work, but a trial in January proved that it did.'
As well as playing his own music, Wong will cover numbers by veteran Canto-pop composer Joseph Koo Ka-fai.
