Hong Kong ensemble takes new approach to new music instruction

A novel initiative involving local and international professionals will put Hong Kong on the world map of new music, organisers say.

Dubbed “Asia’s foremost training institute for contemporary classical music”, the Modern Academy, which opens today, features half a month of intensive music-making between faculties and fellows to perform new or rarely performed works for instruments or voices or both.

“We are preparing the audiences for the new music experience in a home-grown or Asian-grown environment that happens for the first time in Asia,” said William Lane, founder and artistic director of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, which is organising the project.

It would be the second major art event the Australian viola player masterminded since the Freespace Festival last year in November at the West Kowloon waterfront. The summer project is meant to further test the water in terms of how a dynamic art group curates a multi-faceted event at the future cultural hub.

“The Modern Academy is primarily an education project. The fact that a mini-concert comes out of it is like a by-product. So we have to put the education element first and foremost, invest everything into the students and into the collaborations we encourage to happen,” he said.

Linda Yim, a piano mentor at the academy, believed the project would open local musicians to a new horizon of contemporary music.