Hong Kong Sinfonietta

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Founded in 1990 by a group of local musicians with a mission to bring music closer to the community, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta today is an orchestra which has a full season and a full-time management.

Re-organised in 1999, the orchestra appointed Tsung Yeh as its Music Director. In April 2002, renowned conductor Yip Wing-sie joined as the new Music Director.

Since 1999, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta has collaborated with an illustrious array of international musicians and groups, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Augustin Dumay, Christopher Hogwood, Luciano Pavarotti, etc. The orchestra has also been regularly on the participant list of all the major festivals in Hong Kong including the Hong Kong Arts Festival and Le French May.

On tour, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta became the first Asian orchestra to be invited by the Saint-Riquier Festival to perform in the medieval town in northern France in 2001. In 2004, the orchestra returned to the Festival, as well as to the Flâneries Musicales d'Eté de Reims, as part of the Year of China in France. Last summer, the orchestra was invited to two Lithuanian Festivals and was also the first Chinese orchestra to perform at the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw. In May 2006, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta has been invited to join the biggest Mozart Festival in the world in Tokyo, playing six concerts at La Folle Journée Festival.

At home, the orchestra performs year round, mostly at the Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall. Apart from standard repertoire, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta commissions new works every year and also ventures into crossover concerts with other art forms. It also boasts a rich Chinese orchestral repertoire which few orchestras in the world can rival with, mostly recorded on the HUGO label.

On the educational front, Hong Kong Sinfonietta pioneered specially-designed “educational” concerts for different age groups. New concepts on the Hong Kong concert stage: HKS for Kids (for children), Short-cut to Classical Music and Know Your Classical Music (for adults) have, since their inception in 2000, provided a new realm in “audience development”.