PLAY GROUNDS Music has always been an intimate part of my life. It seems I had a date with it even before I was born; my mother taught music at Belilios Public School. She chose piano as my instrument from the age of four. I also joined the Hong Kong Children's Choir as a boy soprano. After completing the piano grade eight exam, I picked up percussion and performed during scene changes at choral performances - one I remember well was the Tsuen Wan Town Hall opening in 1980.
I left Hong Kong for England when I was in Form 2. The school I enrolled in has a 400- year history and part of its tradition is music. There I was fortunate to study the pipe organ under a music director who had mastered technique at the Vatican. I teamed up with a few like-minded schoolmates and we played Beethoven piano trios; we had a great time. Both the violinist and cellist are now professional musicians in St Petersburg and London, respectively. I had the great honour of studying percussion under the legendary Jimmy Blades [professor of percussion at the Royal Academy of Music]. Every month, I travelled six hours on a train from northern England to Sussex, to study with the late master. His garage had in it every kind of percussion instrument, from all over the world. Through him I was introduced to the late Alexander Kelly, a piano professor at the Royal Academy with whom I also studied. It was there I picked up orchestra conducting.
NO MUSIC, NO LIFE The tremendous amount of time I spent on music did not affect my school work. I took 13 subjects, both arts and science, for the GCE exams and I did well. So school curricula and music are not mutually exclusive. I think parents should take a broader perspective when it comes to music education for their kids. From my 20 years in music teaching since 1990, I can say there are not a few parents who see music only as a stepping stone. Once their kids complete eighth-grade piano, they stop and focus on [academic] exams instead. I think it is important to widen, not narrow, the exposure of students to different things, for their wholesome growth.
TWISTS OF FATE My medical career began inadvertently. It was in Canada, where my father had been transferred for work. I was then studying my first degree in chemistry, with music as a minor subject. When it came to applying for medical school, I followed my father's preference and made the application. Unlike most, who played safe by applying for 10 or more schools, I applied to only two, while secretly applying to a music school. I was hoping to lose out on the medical school applications and enrol in the music school. But my plan fell through and I ended up in medical school.
But my medical uniform did not affect my musical life. One time, it literally helped. It was a day of heavy snow and I was late for weekly rehearsals with the [Toronto chapter of] Yip's Children's Choir, of which I was music director from 1990 to 1999. I drove the two-hour drive from the hospital, still in my green surgeon's uniform, in London, Ontario, to Chinatown for a Lunar New Year show. Fatigued, I almost dozed off on the highway and was stopped by a cop. As he was about to issue me a ticket, he saw what I was wearing. In the end, he opened a way through the traffic for me.
CHORUS OF APPROVAL While working on a part-time basis, my conducting took me and the children's choir on tours and to recording studios. It was great fun. I was also involved in the Ontario Choral Federation and introduced Chinese songs into the otherwise all-Western choral repertoire. During my term as chairman of the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Music Competition, I [enabled] prize-winners to perform in nearby towns. As the Chinese community expanded in the 1990s, I worked with performing groups to stage Chinese folk songs and dances during Chinese New Year. One year, we performed The Yellow River concerto and The Butterfly Lovers. During the 1997 handover, I led the Yip's children's performance at the [Toronto] celebrations. At noon (midnight, Hong Kong time), we sang the national anthem. After that I went straight to the airport to catch a flight to Boston and summer school at the Harvard School of Public Health. During my two-year master's degree programme there, music continued to take up half of my time. From Thursday through Saturday, I was based at the Boston Symphony Hall. The most memorable concert was a piano duet by Evgeny Kissin and James Levine, playing an all-Schubert programme.