CHARLES KWONG
鄺展維
Charles Kwong is a composer currently based in Hong Kong. His creative output focuses on orchestral music, chamber compositions for musicians across various musical cultures, site-specific music, and transdisciplinary works that depart from the paradigm of concert music. Approaching music as experiential situations, Kwong’s works often concern with the sensuality of time and space as revealed by sounds and the act of listening, the eclecticism of performance practices in their juxtapositions, site specificity, and the performativity of musical forms and genres.
Kwong’s music has been internationally featured in festivals such as Lucerne Forward, Ultraschall Berlin, Takefu, Ticino Musica, La Roque d'Anthéron, Marvão and IRCAM ManiFeste, among other professional presentations across Europe and Asia. In recent years he has received commissions from Ensemble recherche, Lucerne Festival, Takefu International Music Festival, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (HKNME), and Hong Kong Arts Festival, among others. Other renowned groups and musicians who performed Kwong’s music include London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble of Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestra UniMi, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, Mario Caroli, Jeanne-Marie Conquer, Tadashi Tajima, Tosiya Suzuki, Edward Gardner, Christoph Poppen, Yip Wing-sie and Pierre-André Valade, among others.
Kwong has developed a long and fruitful collaboration with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta since 2014. Their artistic bonding, which includes a two-season appointment of Kwong as the orchestra’s Artist Associate in 2020-2022, has resulted in nine commissions that have been showcased locally and as well globally in the orchestra’s overseas tours. With his role in Contemporary Music Research for the orchestra since 2015, Kwong also has been contributing ideas to the orchestra’s planning in contemporary repertoire and commissioning.
In 2020-2022, Kwong was engaged by Ensemble recherche for the collaborative project “the new recherche” which researches on the subject of gentrification, for which he wrote Migrating Tracks, which was subsequently performed in Berlin, Munich and Freiburg. For the 60th anniversary of the Hong Kong City Hall, in 2022 Kwong was commissioned the Lullabies - an orchestral piece for the programme of London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Edward Gardner, who hailed the work as “wonderful, having a beautiful, light, airy quality, lots of fantasy and a real underlying wistful beauty which the orchestral have really enjoyed indulging in”. In 2016, ensemble intercontemporain performed Kwong’s Lachrymae in their first ever performance in Hong Kong in the ensemble’s history.
Kwong’s interest in site specificity and transdisciplinarity of music in recent years led him to leadership roles in several grand-scale productions in Hong Kong. He was the curator of Hong Kong New Music Ensemble’s Our Audible City (2018-2019), for which he wrote Atlas, a series of site-specific works tailored for non-concert-hall spaces in Hong Kong. His research in the site-specificity of music subsequently led to the conception of Requiem (2020-2021) commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary, and Lifelike (2021), commissioned for the Hi! Flora Fauna series held in the Hong Kong Botanical and Zoological Garden. In 2022 he was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival for Elsewhere, a site-specific ensemble work to be performed in KKL Luzern Concert hall, whose world premiere was reviewed by Luzern Luzernerzeitung as "enchanting the concert hall". For his research in these aspects, Kwong took artist residencies at the Zurich University of the Arts and at the Tai Kwun Contemporary Artists' Studio in 2020.
Born in 1985 in Hong Kong, Kwong in his formative years studied music at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and King’s College London, before earning his doctorate in compositions in 2013 from The University of York under the supervision of Thomas Simaku. Over the years, his artistic development has benefited significantly through tutelages and masterclasses by Toshio Hosokawa, Francesco Filidei, Mauro Lanza and Oscar Bianchi, among others.
Kwong co-founded PROJECT21st in 2019 and has been its Artistic Director since then.
作曲家鄺展維現居香港，創作集中於管弦樂、為多種音樂文化的音樂家而寫的室樂作品、場域特定音樂、以及離開演奏廳範式的跨領域作品。將音樂視為一種體驗處境，鄺展維的作品常探討時間與空間透過聲音與聆聽所揭示的感官性、不同演奏法在並置中的折衷、場域特定性、曲式與樂種的展現性。
鄺展維的音樂作品在國際間曾於瑞士琉森Forward音樂節、柏林Ultraschall當代音樂節、日本武生國際音樂節、瑞士提契諾音樂節、IRCAM ManiFeste、法國拉羅克‧昂迪榮國際鋼琴音樂節、葡萄牙馬爾旺國際音樂節、以及歐亞多地之藝術節及音樂節中演出。近年委約者包括Ensemble recherche、琉森音樂節、武生國際音樂節、香港小交響樂團、大館當代美術館、香港創樂團、香港藝術節等，其他曾合作的知名樂隊及演奏家包括倫敦愛樂樂團、Ensemble intercontemporain、琉森音樂節當代樂團小組、法國廣播愛樂樂團、斯圖加特創聲獨唱團、米蘭大學管弦樂團、意大利Divertimento樂團、澳洲Ensemble Offspring、長笛演奏家Mario Caroli、小提琴演奏家Jeanne-Marie Conquer、尺八大師田嶋直士、直笛演奏家鈴木俊哉、以及指揮家Edward Gardner、柏鵬、葉詠詩、Pierre-André Valade等。
鄺展維自2014年開始與香港小交響樂團展開了緊密而豐碩的合作，並於2020至2022兩個樂季間擔任駐團藝術家，迄今累積了九首委約作品，由樂團於本地及國際間海外巡演中發表。此外，鄺展維亦自2015年起為香港小交響樂團擔任當代音樂研究，參與樂團的當代曲目及委約的策劃。
2020至2022年間鄺展維獲德國Ensemble recherche邀請，在樂團對士紳化作研究對象的製作－「the new recherche」－參與構思及創作，並為此譜寫了委約室樂作品《Migrating Tracks》，於柏林、慕尼黑及弗賴堡演出。為慶祝香港大會堂落成六十周年，鄺展維於2022年獲委約為Edward Gardner所領導的倫敦愛樂樂團譜寫管弦樂新作－《緣起》，該作被Edward Gardner譽為「精彩，擁有優美、輕巧、空靈的特質，充滿幻想，蘊涵著沉鬱的美，樂團在演奏時沉醉其中」。2016年法國ensemble intercontemporain在樂團史上首次於香港演出的音樂會中演出了鄺展維之作品《樹猶如此》。
鄺展維近年對音樂之場域特定性與跨界性的探索亦使他領導了數個在香港的大型制作。2018至2019年他為香港創樂團策劃「聽得見的城市」，並為此計劃創作了一系列共六首於非音樂會場地演出的場域特定音樂作品－《亞特拉斯》。及後兩年鄺展維繼續發展出另外兩部場域特定作品，分別為2020年由香港創樂團委約於香港動植物公園演出的《栩栩如生》，以及2021年由大館當代美術館委約於大館前監獄及警局建築群內演出的《安魂曲》。2022年鄺展維獲琉森音樂節委約創作琉森文化和會議中心音樂廳的場域特定室樂作品《Elsewhere》，該作世界首演被琉森日報樂評稱為「為音樂廳施下魔法」。為深化此方向之研究，鄺展維曾於2020年獲選參加於蘇黎世藝術大學為期四個月的蘇黎世市藝術家駐留計劃，及同年為期半年的大館藝術家工作室駐場計劃。
鄺展維1985年生於香港，早年於香港中文大學及倫敦大學國王學院修讀音樂，及後於英國約克大學在Thomas Simaku指導下鑽研作曲，於2013年獲頒授博士學位。他近年獲得細川俊夫多次指導，並曾參加Francesco Filidei、Mauro Lanza及Oscar Bianch等作曲家之大師班，從中獲重要啟迪。
鄺展維是藝術創作及協作平台—廿一檔之聯合創辦人兼藝術總監。