Hong Kong composer's futuristic sounds wow California campus
Doctoral student in music collaborates with orchestra in La Jolla, California on a 'tele-concerto'
An unlikely Hong Kong theme has recently made its way into the campus town of La Jolla in southern California, where it struck an unusual chord.
Chen Yeung-ping, a doctoral candidate in music composition at the University of California, San Diego, is the winner of this year's Nee Commission Award with a new futuristic work based on a nostalgic poem by the late Hong Kong poet Ya Si, who studied there some 30 years ago.
"It was quite coincidental that I ran into his poem in 2013, the year of his passing," said Chen, a Hong Kong-born composer, over the phone from San Diego.
"That year I won a grant from the Asian Cultural Council and learned that the late Professor Leung Ping-kwan [Ya Si] was also a grantee and an alumnus of UCSD," said Chen, 31.
But the real connection was the poet's work The Moon in La Jolla, written during his studies there. The homesick sentiment underlining the poetry had an immediate appeal to Chen.
"It so happened that the La Jolla Symphony's artistic director, Steven Schick, invited me to write a new orchestral work using telematic technology that enables instruments outside of the concert hall to be a part of the performance through the internet," he said.
Chen has been studying composition with Professor Lei Liang for five years since getting degrees at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and Baptist University.