King's Harmonica Quintet 15th Anniversary Concert on 13 Jan 2003

["Lau Chun Bong" <cblau@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear list members,

Glad to see the list is back.  A good news to add to that...

If you plan to come to Hong Kong in mid January, you are cordially invited
to join us in celebrating the 15th anniversary of our harmonica ensemble
King's Harmonica Quintet << http://home.netvigator.com/~cblau/khq >> on 13
January 2003, Monday.  In the concert that evening in the City Hall Concert
Hall, we will present our achievements in the past 15 years, not just by the
five of us, but pulling together some of our best friends who are
representative of our musical journey in the past decades.

Since our 10th anniversary, the most significant musical achievement is
definitely the emergence of new compositions for harmonica quintet. Starting
from the 2000 Hong Kong Arts Festival, we have garnered 14 works from famous
local composers, totaling over 2 hours of original music.  In the
International Society for Contemporary Music World Music Days held in
October in Hong Kong, we are proud to present an "all Hong Kong
compositions" concert for the composers from all over the World.  We will
continue the momentum by having 3 new works in this concert, written by 3
different composers: Hui Cheung-wai and Mui Kwong-chiu who are no strangers
to harmonica quintet, and Clarence Mak who will write for us for the first
time, offering some fresh ideas on the harmonica quintet.  Hui, who is by
far the most proliferating composer, has written a piece for 2 harmonicas
and Stephen Chau on guitar.  Mui has based on the well-known Chinese tune
Colour Clouds Chasing the Moon and developed a rhapsody for the Quintet,
sheng (Loo Sze-wang whom we first worked with in the 2000 Hong Kong Arts
Festival), and piano (Nerissa Yeung, our resident pianist).

We have not forgotten the musical genre that we started off with - classical
string quartets.  We have selected two well-known pieces: Mozart's Oboe
Quartet in F Major, and Dvorak's String Quintet Op.97.  The latter work has
its special meaning - we first played this together with our dear friend
(and fan of harmonica as well) Herman Ho 10 years ago.  The sweet memory
urges us to play this again with him 10 years later.

The final part of the concert features the large harmonica ensemble,
consisting of 17 of our best friends whom we started to know each other at
different times.  Some of them were our teachers while some of them were our
students, but they all become members of the cozy harmonica family that we
feel very much at home.  We will play two contrasting works - the lyrical
Vocalise of Rachmaninov and the energizing Light Cavalry Overture of Suppe.

We are eager for the day to come, and hope you will share our feeling.
Please come to our website to see the leaflet about the concert with
detailed instructions on how to obtain tickets.

Yours sincerely,


Lau Chun Bong

King's Harmonica Quintet
http://home.netvigator.com/~cblau/khq