Bright Sheng, Chinese-American composer and the founder of Intimacy of Creativity is feeling good about the coming third season in many ways. With a stellar artistic line up, up-and-coming young composers and a growing recognition both locally and internationally, Bright

We professionals rarely, if ever read through music for fun. We are too busy preparing music. I avoid sight-reading, if I can. I am a professional musician after all! I take pride in preparation, precision and perfection. I delve beyond

Matthew Tommasini recalled how emerging young pianist Haochen Zhang suggested to composer Bright Sheng at The Intimacy of Creativity – The Bright Sheng Partnership: Composers Meet Performers in Hong Kong last year that maybe he should cut his music piece

Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) is widely regarded as cornerstone to Germany’s romantic era. Not only was he an accomplished composer, he also inaugurated and published for Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (the New Journal for Music), one of the

Mass in D major, Op. 123, “Missa Solemnis” (Philharmonic Symphony, Walter) (1948) ‘Is this the greatest piece ever written?’ Such was the question fired at me by Sir Roger Norrington during our correspondence in preparation for the recent performance of

Dance Preludes When you’re asked to think of a twentieth-century composer who uses imaginative textures and sounds, who do you think of? Ravel? Boulez? What about folk melodies – who springs to mind then? Bartok, or maybe Vaughan-Williams? And an

It was recently reported that Hunan province is going to build its very own “Sydney Opera House”, which is due to be completed in 2015. The designer is the renowned architect Zaha Hadid, who also designed the Guangzhou Opera House,

I spent much of last year studying Wagner’s great tetralogy of music dramas, The Ring of the Nibelung. If anyone hasn’t done so, I would heartily recommend it – simply to list the number of things I found fascinating about