Hollywood films, Studio Ghibli, opera and… clothes? Conductor on leading young musicians while working in the family garment business
- Philip Chu, director of Hong Kong-based music ensemble Cantabile, talks about how he defied his parents’ expectations to make music a liveable career
- Chu, who recorded a whole Hollywood film score over one recent weekend, helps run his family’s garment business – it is tough but he would have it no other way
To say that Philip Chu Chun-hei packs a lot into his life is an understatement.
For that little weekend getaway, as he calls it, he took an overnight flight from Hong Kong to Australia on a Friday, stayed in the recording studio the whole weekend, arrived back in Hong Kong at 6am on the Monday and went directly to work.
He would do it all over again, the 43-year-old says. “I’d just be doing something I enjoy doing. There’d be no stress at all,” he says.
Chu, who was born and raised in Hong Kong, went to Australia in 1996 to study. The plan was for him to stay there for two years before returning to pursue a business degree at a university in Hong Kong.
But that was not what he wanted to do. Despite his parents’ opposition, Chu stayed in Australia and studied voice and conducting at the University of Sydney and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
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“Of course, there were conflicts between me and my parents, who have a traditional way of thinking music is just a hobby. But I stayed overseas for 15 years and I could actually make a living as a musician,” he says.
Because of personal circumstances, however, he relocated back to Hong Kong in 2010 and joined the family business.
To keep his music career going while maintaining a full-time job, Chu, a tenor, founded Cantabile, a chamber choir and orchestra made up of young musicians in Hong Kong.
“The university education system can teach musicians how to be better at their instruments or give them more musical knowledge, but there is not enough training on how to behave in the professional world or what kind of mentality you need to have,” he says.
In March, Cantabile will present The Fairy Queen, a version of the 1692 work by English composer Henry Purcell often called a semi-opera.
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“The orchestra will be playing with period instruments, not modern instruments, to match the Baroque music at the time. I have also selected lighter voices for the choir so that they are not the same kind of operatic voices that you hear in romantic 19th-century operas,” he adds.
Chu, who has made numerous recordings for radio network ABC Classics in Australia and soundtracks for video games and anime, is tight-lipped about the film that he has just done a recording for, as it has not been released yet.
Keeping his two parallel lives running abreast at the same time requires a bit of juggling. He estimates that he spends around 80 per cent of his time at Viva Knitwear, the family business, and the rest on Cantabile.
But it is all worth it, he says, when he watches young musicians’ careers take off internationally.
“A chorus member now sings solos everywhere over Europe. Some of them have gone into a specific genre, like becoming Baroque specialists. This gives me the motivation to do more and nurture the next generation who have real talent but are financially unstable or not well enough to study overseas,” he says.
“The Fairy Queen”, Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall, March 18, 8pm.
