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Artist

TANG Lok-yin

Tang received her Bachelor degree in Composition at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and acquired her Master and Doctor degree in Composition at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Tang won numerous scholarships and participated in worldwide international music camps and festivals and was the recipient of Fulbright Scholarship, chosen as a visiting scholar of the Columbia University in New York City. Apart from writing music, she also engages in arrangement, performance, educational undertaking and radio broadcasting. Since 2016, She is the director of the Hong Kong International Drummer Festival.

Tang’s works achieve mastery in both Chinese and Western music, covering instrumental music, dance and operatic music. She is an active composer worldwide, with a brilliant track record of awards to her credit including the ACL Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize by the Asian Composers’ League; the first prize at the Asian Pacific Festival of the Asian Composers’ League Conference; Young Composer Award at the International Competition for Chinese Orchestral Composition; and Outstanding Award at the “Palatino” Piano Composition.

Tang’s commissioned works include The Sunflower for Yu Kwang-chung’s Poetry in Music, the chamber work Sixty for the celebration of the 60th Anniversary of Chung Chi College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Dance Company and Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra co-production Evacuation Order for dance theatre, Hong Kong Arts Festival commissioned Opera Tree Rhapsody, Yuen．Yuen commissioned by Asia Society Music in the Exhibition A Story of Light: Hon Chi-fun, commissioned by “Dr. Helmut Sohmen composition prize” for a symphony orchestral work commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn. Her new work Movements-homage to Joseph Haydn was performed in Vienna and Shadow and Hope: Cantata from Six Continents in Age of Pandemic which commissioned by Germany Icking Municipality.

Email

lokyintang@gmail.com

Website

 

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Work

Shadow and Hope

Maximillian Cheng @ Moon 9 Image

Hong Kong composer Dr Tang Lok-yin has been commissioned to write a cantata for the German concert Shadow and Hope, which will premiere on 14 November 2021 at the Church of St Benedikt Ebenhausen, Schäftlarn.

Commissioned by the Municipality of Icking, Director Philipp Amelung invited composers from six continents to explore the theme of the coronavirus pandemic, which has been spread to all of the six continents. The concert consists of works from composers Antoine Sima from Gabon, Harry Crowl from Brazil, Randall Svane from the US, Markus Höring from Germany and Brenton Broadstock from Australia, with Tang Lok-yin representing Asia. The concert will be performed by the Theodor Schüz Ensemble, alongside a string quartet from Tübingen.

About the composition, the text is designed and written by composer Tang Lok Yin for Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass in English, Chinese, Japan, French, German, and Italian. Here is the first section.

I tell you
I will tell you
I will not tell you
I cannot tell you
I did not tell you
I told you
I want to say something
She did not say anything
Why donʼt you say something?
She told me
He doesnʼt know
I donʼt know either
Why donʼt you say something?
He told me

Work

“The Sunflowers” dedicated to Prof. Yu Kwang Chung

”The Sunflower – On a Painting by van Gogh”
When I read the poem aloud, it took me back to the auction party in 1968. Several scenes caught my eyes such as the elegant decoration of the venue, the nobles’ gorgeous clothes, people bidding vehemently and the moment when the hammer knocked. Musical elements and gestures flow in my mind along the imaginations. Let the auction begins.

The mallet raised in Christ’s room, Going,
Going,
Gone,
Come thumping down,
So with thirty-nine million are bought The tightened breathes in the room And the bulging eyes in the world.
Yet forever beyond ransom
Is the ear that was sliced
The red hair that was scorched,
The decayed teeth that went loose. Forever sold are the thirty-seven years. The mallet is raised at the excited crowd,
The pistol was raised at the lonely heart-
Going, the sliced ear,
Going, the scorched hair,
Going, the decayed teeth,
Going, the haunted dreams,
Going, the fits of convulsions,
Going, the letters and the diary,
Going, the doctors and the sickbeds,
Going, Dear Theo my brother-
And with a bang all, all was gone,
When the generous heart
Burst into sunflowers and flowering suns.

From Yu Kwang-chung:
The Night Watchman:
A Bilingual Selection of Poems
(2004, 2nd Edition)

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