Hong Kong composer Lora Chow’s unusual journey from finance to writing Cantonese musicals
Lora Chow’s musical Dr Clown will feature at the coming Fringe Festival in Hong Kong. We look at her eclectic career path, driven by passion
A new Cantonese musical written by Lora Chow Hiu-ching, a Yale University-trained soprano and composer, is one of the highlights of the coming Fringe Festival in Hong Kong.
Called Dr Clown, it is the tale of a doctor who is so convinced that patients need emotional and psychological support alongside clinical care that he decides that his new calling is to become a hospital clown. Meanwhile, his nephew, a first-year medical student, secretly dreams of being a filmmaker.
Like the titular character, Chow has followed an unconventional career path to fulfil her passion and commitment to bringing joy to people through art.
She started playing the piano at the age of four and has picked up the violin, trumpet, harp and organ over the years, travelling to perform with choirs and orchestras abroad as part of her schooling in Hong Kong and the UK. This laid a foundation for an artistic spirit that refused to be confined.
She majored in music and economics at Yale University, and “fell so much in love with opera” through productions with the Yale Baroque Opera Project. She spent summers performing in Germany and Italy, but the itinerant and often lonely reality of a professional musician’s life prompted a pivot.