Repertoire Reading Session

Singaporean Conductor-Composer Darius Lim graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama with a Masters in Choral Conducting (with Distinction). He is the Music Director of VOCO Singapore Ladies Choir and VOCE Singapore Men’s Choir, President of the Choral Directors’ Association of Singapore and Associate Choirmaster of the Singapore Symphony Children’s Choir. Lim is one of the leading new-generation Asian Conductor-Composers of his time. He has risen to prominence in the national and international music scene with more than 40 national and international awards in both local and international choral and composition competitions. He is one of the newest international composers to be published by world publishing company, Edition Peters.
As a composer, Lim’s choral works have been performed widely around the world. Between 2012 and 2014, Light of the Night, Puppet’s Dream and 5 Elemental Dances for Youth and Children’s Choirs received international acclaim, with subsequent performances of those works by more than 250 choirs from China, America, Hong Kong, Australia, Spain, South Korea, Finland, Malaysia, Taiwan, Russia, Singapore and the Philippines. Most recently, Lim was the featured composer in the world’s leading choir magazine, Choir & Organ. His commission of Gloria! Alleluia! in the New Music Series of the magazine was recorded by the Choir of Royal Holloway and Director Rupert Gough.

Born in Hong Kong, Austin Yip’s works have been performed worldwide. Places like the United States, Argentina, Scotland, Italy, Slovenia, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, China and Australia have seen traces of his performance records. His musical creations are very diverse, ranging from orchestral piece to electroacoustic works, from Western orchestral to folk instruments. All the above shows his knowledge and creativity upon different styles of music.

Yip has participated in numerous music festivals, including ISCM, International Rostrum of Composers and ACL Festivals, in which he has worked closely with world-renowned performers. Yip is the holder of CASH Golden Sail Music Award 2017 with his orchestral work “Metamorphosis”, 2018 Chou’s Annual Composition Commission Award, CASH Best Commissioned Piece Award, Eisner Prize, Milton C. Witzel Memorial Prize, James Kitagawa Memorial Music Scholarship, Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholarship, Henry Holbrook Scholarship, James King Scholarship and Rayson Huang Scholarship.

Yip received his PhD and Master of Philosophy degrees at the University of Hong Kong with the support from the University Postgraduate Fellowship and University Postgraduate Studentship. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts (Music) degree from the University of California, Berkeley with a “high distinction in general scholarship”, and a FTCL in composition.

Yip’s works are recorded and published by Donemus (Netherlands), ABRSM (UK), BabelScores (France), Ablaze Records (US/ Australia), Navona Records (US), Hugo Productions (Hong Kong) and Hong Kong Composers Guild. He is a lecturer at the Hong Kong Baptist University, as well as the chairman of Toolbox Percussion.

David Hamilton (b.1955) was Head of Music at Epsom Girls Grammar School until the end of 2001 where he conducted the award-winning girls’ choir Opus. He has been Deputy Music Director of Auckland Choral (1996-2011) and Composer in Residence with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (1999). He maintains part-time involvement in music education as a composition tutor and choral conductor.

He is well-known as a choral composer and conductor, workshop leader and adjudicator (including the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in Wales in 2012, 2013 and 2017). His choral music is widely performed and is published in the UK, USA, Germany and Finland. Works have been commissioned by choirs in Japan, England, USA, Finland, Canada and Ireland. His music has won competitions in Italy (2000), the USA (2005, 2006 and 2008), Israel (2007), the UK (2008), and New Zealand (2014). In 2013 he was the guest composer at the national choral event Sing Aotearoa, and in 2015 Composer in Residence at the NZ Singing School. In 2016 American Triptych took first place in a competition organized by the Stockton Chorale (USA), and in 2017 Are We There Yet? won the ensemble section of the Australian and New Zealand Viola Society Viola Composition Competition.

Website: www.dbhmusic.co.nz

Ng is a renowned composer, producer, sheng performer and a cappella singer in Hong Kong. He is Hong Kong Sinfonietta’s first Artist Associate, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s first resident composer, music director of the fusion group SIU2 and the co-artistic director of the a cappella theatre company Yat Po Singers. After receiving a post-graduate degree from the Music Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he went on to study Japanese at the International Christian University in Tokyo and Jazz Music at Codarts in the Netherlands.

In 2012, Ng received Award for Best Artist from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. In 2009 and 2013, he received the Best Serious Composition in CASH Golden Sail Music Awards for the theatrical choral concert Rock Hard and the double sheng concerto Before the City Collapses respectively. The next year his choral work Voices of the World was awarded the CASH most performed work award 2013 (serious music).

Ng has collaborated with various art groups and pop singers, his major choral works include Voices of the World; the 6th China Children’s Choral Festival’s theme song Before we grow up; the theme song of World Youth & Children’s Choir Festival (Hong Kong) HuXi, Love in Music, Dairy of Spring; Choral Medley Ears in the Heaven and The Hong Kong Children’s Choir’s 40th Anniversary Musical’s theme song Magical Beanland.

Other works include I Wish I Could Make a Wish, The Theatre Concert of Jimmy Liao; drumset concerto Fly; sheng concerto The Seventh Month; Chinese orchestral work Tang Resonating; film score for Mcdull Pork of Music; grand dance drama L'Amour Immortel, Lady White of West Lake and Di Zi Gui; theatrical a cappella works for Yat Po Singers Rock Hard, Sing Sang Sung, Requiem HK. Pop music includes Hins Cheung’s Under the Sakura Tree and Eason Chan’s Can’t Get Happy.

Sandra Milliken is based in Brisbane, Australia, where she works as a composer, conductor, teacher and adjudicator. A music graduate of the University of New England, Sandra also has a Masters in choral conducting from the University of Queensland. She holds performance qualifications from Trinity College London and the Australian Music Examinations Board.

Sandra has had a long involvement with choral music. She is currently the music director of the Bayside Divas, a women’s choir based in the Brisbane. From 1995 to 2008, Sandra was on the staff of Queensland Youth Choir, conducting several of their ensembles and in 2006 was appointed the QYC Artistic Director. In 2007 she took up the position of Conductor of the much-awarded Blackstone-Ipswich Cambrian Choir where she remained until 2016. She then went on to direct the Sunshine Coast Oriana Choir.

During 2001 Sandra travelled overseas on a Churchill Fellowship studying choral conducting and vocal/choral pedagogy. She visited 56 choirs in England, Sweden, Finland, the United States and Canada, working with and observing many international choral experts.

Sandra has achieved international recognition as an Australian composer specialising in choral music. Her works have been performed and recorded by choirs in Scandinavia, Central and Western Europe, the United Kingdom, North America, south-east Asia, New Zealand and Australia. She has her own choral music series – Choral Vivace – which is published by Edition Peters London.

Sandra has an avid interest in, and commitment to, promoting Australian choral music through her choral workshops and international invitations. As an adjudicator and music educator, Sandra has travelled extensively within Australia and internationally to Singapore, China, Canada, the United States, England and Finland.

Born in Hong Kong, Dr Ho is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and a multi-award-winning composer whose achievements include the PROCAN 1987 and CAPAC 1988 of Canada; and the 21st Hong Kong Film Award for his soundtrack My Life As McDull. In addition, his mass choral work Music of the Spheres has been awarded the CASH’s 2005 Golden Sail Award in the most widely performed serious music category. In 2015, the movie Mcdull, me and my mom won the prestigious Gold Horse award for Best Animation and for which Dr Ho wrote the film score.

As a lyricist and a composer, Dr Ho’s passion is to write Cantonese choral music. The result is over a hundred compositions and numerous musicals that are full of the colours of Hong Kong, for instance, the 35th anniversary musical Hong Kong Rocks commissioned by HKCC. Internationally, Dr Ho’s music has been featured repeatedly in festivals and competitions such as the Pacific Piano Competition 1999 in Richmond, Canada; the CFMTA’s Musical Odyssey 2001 in Kelowna, Canada; the World Choral Symposium 2003 in Switzerland; the Polyfollia 2006 in France; the SongBridge 2008 in Denmark; the World Youth and Children’s Choir Festival 2017 and the Belt and Road World Choral Festival 2018.

Dr Ho is currently the BME program leader and an assistant professor in the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts at the Education University of Hong Kong and appointed Adjunct Professor by the South China Normal University. He is the Composer in Residence of HKCC since 2010.