Tag: 2015

War Sum Up @ Macao Cultural Centre – 27 June, 2015

War Sum Up @ Macao Cultural Centre - 27 June, 2015

War Sum Up is a highly visually alternative opera, merging Japanese manga images projected on stage with classic warrior texts. Fuelled by a mash-up of chamber pop, electronic and new classical music, the piece has been received with great acclaim after its premiere in Riga in 2012.

Conceived by experimental Danish theatre Hotel Pro Forma and performed by Grammy award winners Latvian Radio Choir with a score by British symphonic art-pop ensemble The Irrepressibles and Latvian composer Santa Ratniece, the piece is a pioneering artistic reflection on the brutal, yet fascinating nature of war.

Through a blend of striking light effects, smashing sets and technical innovation, 12 singers appear on stage wearing costumes by fashion designer Henrik Vibskov, to tell a story with three main characters: a soldier who suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the spectre of a Warrior killed in battle and a Spy who became a superwoman in order to survive. Playing with light and darkness, the strong visuals are accompanied by a mix of sounds blending in men and machines as metaphors for an endless scourge of the human existence.

War Sum Up looks to push our senses to the limits, while offering it’s audience a chance to reflect on a universal subject, materialized in a visual manner that it hopes will encourage us to look at the world with new eyes.

Conceived by: Hotel Pro Forma
Performed by: Latvian Radio Choir

War Sum Up
Hotel Pro Forma
Date: 8pm 27 June, 2015
Venue: Macao Cultural Centre, Grand Auditorium
Tickets: MOP$300, $250, $200, $150, $100
More info: In Japanese with Chinese and English surtitles

War Sum Up @ Macao Cultural Centre - 27 June, 2015

Tin Mei Avenue – 12 June, 2015

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Over the last 6 months the Tin Mei Avenue protest site has grown and evolved, there’s a kids area, library, art area, recycling, church, art installations, solar power to provide electricity… Tomorrow or so the rumour goes the police will look to clear the tents and everything else under the premise that the goods have been abandoned by their owners. An interesting skirt around the law, which has taken the government lawyers six months come up. Some of the tents do look pretty manky, but others are very well cared for and obviously inhabited by protestors.

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The earlier ‘clearances’ were carried out backed by questionable court injunctions and the police displayed an obvious relish in destroying peoples property – sometimes without even checking if a tent was empty. So a question for our lawyer readers, do the police have a duty to exercise care and attention when removing ‘property they claim is abandoned’ or can they just destroy and damage it with impunity? Guess we’ll find out.

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Hong Kong 7-0 Bhutan @ Mongkok Stadium – 11 June, 2015

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A patriotic and boisterous sold-out Mongkok Stadium had much to cheer as Hong Kong strolled past Bhutan seven goals to nil to get their World Cup qualifying campaign off to a winning start. Jaimes McKee open the scoring and his team-mates joined him on the score sheet at regular intervals. Only poor finishing kept the score from reaching double figures as Hong Kong totally outplayed the team 5 places above them in the Fifa world rankings.

Hundreds of fans were turned away as the stadium sold out just after 6pm. What the crowd thought of China’s Fifa racist insults of Hong Kong was pretty obvious as the ‘National’ anthem was drowned out by boos and loud cheers of Hong Kong. As one of the many signs hanging in the stadium said Hong is Not China

Hong Kong’s next match is against The Maldives at Mongkok Stadium, 8pm 16 June – tickets on sale now.

Hong Kong
Jaimes McKee 19′, Christian Annan 23′, Kwan Yee Lo 30′, Ju Yingzhi 42′, Ka Wai Lam 49′ PEN, Jaimes McKee 57′, Godfred Karikari 67′

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Grand Opening @ Townhouse – 5 June 2015

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Townhouse celebrated it’s opening with a party on the 5 June, 2015
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Grand Opening Jean Louis David – 3 June, 2015

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The Grand Opening of Jean Louis David’s Asia flagship store in Central – 3 June, 2015
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A Russian Sacred Feast @ HK Cultural Centre – 7 June, 2015

A Russian Sacred Feast

Sergei Rachmaninoff is among the most popular composers of “classical music,” his works beloved for their intensely romantic melodies and rich harmonies. Some of his tunes have even been adapted for popular songs (“All by Myself,” “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again,” etc.). In Hong Kong he is best known for his piano music, especially two of his four concertos, but he also wrote outstanding symphonies and operas, as well as two major extended, unaccompanied choral works that reflect his deep Russian Orthodox piety: the Liturgy of St. John Chrisostom (1910) and the All-Night Vigil (also known as the Vespers), completed five years later.

Orthodox Christian practice forbids the use of instruments (other than bells) in church music, limiting its sound to that of the human voice. Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil finds its roots not only in traditional Russian sacred chant, but also in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s pioneering, elaborate choral setting of the same service. The Hong Kong Bach Choir, which in January 2005 sang a single movement from this magnificent work in a program of Vespers selections, here offers a more extended selection, chosen for the beauty and variety of the individual pieces.

As with Rachmaninoff, the theme of Orthodox Christianity plays a prominent role in the music of Rodion Shchedrin, perhaps the most illustrious living Russian composer (the Carmen Ballet, Anna Karenina – also a ballet – the opera Dead Souls, and five Concertos for Orchestra, among many others). But while his choral masterpiece The Sealed Angel (1988) incorporates sacred Orthodox texts, in the Church Slavonic language, it blends them with themes from Nikolai Leskov’s eponymous story. As the composer wrote, “The religious feeling runs through Leskov’s story. As though golden spangles of initial lines of Orthodox liturgical chants sung by Leskov’s Old Believers in hard times are scattered here and there.” In the end, the work is a modern Russian secular liturgy based on canonical Orthodox texts, and results in music of surpassing sensual beauty.

Programme
Sergei Rachmaninov: Selections from All Night Vigil, Op. 37
Rodion Shchedrin: The Sealed Angel

Performers
The Hong Kong Bach Choir
Featuring Soloist: Megan Sterling, Principal Flute of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
Music Director & Conductor: Jerome Hoberman

The-Hong-Kong Bach-Choir

A Russian Sacred Feast
Hong Kong Bach Choir
Date: 8pm 7 June, 2015
Venue: HK Cultural Centre, Concert Hall
Tickets: $240, $160, $80 from URBTIX
More info:
10% off: Members of the Law Society of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, Hong Kong Institute of Architects, Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, Hong Kong Arts Administrators Association
15% off: Friends of the Hong Kong Bach Choir
50% off: Full-time students, senior citizens, people with disabilities and the minder, and CSSA recipients