Charity concert featuring top Hong Kong schools hopes to inspire a city fractured by political rift

An unprecedented charity concert that blends diverse voices of all ages and walks of life via music today  offers, against a backdrop of the city’s tumultuous politics, a timely message of unity.

The concert, aptly dubbed "Together We Sing",  marks the first time nearly 500 alumni, aged 14 to 80, of eight top schools of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui  will share a stage since the city’s Anglican Church began its ministry in education in 1851.

Alumni from St Paul’s College, Diocesan Girls’ School, Diocesan Boys’ School, St Stephen’s College, St Stephen’s Girls’ College, St Paul’s Co-educational College, Heep Yunn School and Bishop Hall Jubilee School  will treat audiences at the DBS auditorium in Mong Kok to Chinese and Western songs while raising money to promote choral arts among deprived people.

But the original charitable aim is now overshadowed, following on the heels of a legislative voting debacle on political reform that deeply divided society.

“Charity is [now] secondary in this event, compared to how our honourable alumni from all walks of life can sing in one beautiful voice,” the organisers’ chairman, the Reverend Simon Tang Yick-hong,  said.

“This concert is about connection in the Christian faith. We didn’t schedule it knowingly under such circumstances. But it turns out almost like a grace of God to provide the needed chicken soup for the soul.”