Monique Duphil

Piano

At the age of ten, Monique Duphil entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de París and studied with Jean Doyen, Marguerite Long and Joseph Calvet.  Having won the First Prize in piano at sixteen, she graduated the following year with the Grand Prize in professional chamber music.  Later studies were with Harriet Serr and Vladimir Horbowski in South America and Germany.

She made her formal debut at fifteen, performing Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto in G Minor with Orchestre de la Société des Concerts (now Orchestre de París) and soon earned prizes in four international competitions, including the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.  Appearing in more than 2000 concerts throughout the world, she has performed recitals, chamber music, and concerts with orchestras in Western and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Korea, Japan, China, India, New Zealand, Australia, North Africa, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and almost every country in South and Central America.  The duo she formed in 1976 with her husband Jay Humeston, formerly Hong Kong Philharmonic's Principal Cellist, was highly successful in America, Europe and throughout Asia.

In recognition of her spectacular debut in the United States with the Philadelphia Orchestra, substituting on a few hour's notice for cellist Rostropovich, Duphil was reengaged by Eugene Ormandy to appear with him four more times.  Invited by Charles Dutoit, she recorded in live performance of Ginastera’s Piano Concerto No. 1 for the Swiss Radio with the Bern Symphony Orchestra, in presence of the composer.  The Cleveland Orchestra chose her to premiere the Roger Sessions Piano Concerto in 1985.

Apart from Philadelphia and Cleveland, others among the numerous symphony orchestras Duphil has performed with are Québec, Warsaw, Bern, Munich, Paris, Caracas, Mexico, Lima, Río de Janeiro, Seoul, Tokyo Metropolitan, Kanazawa, Sapporo, Taipei, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Singapore, Hanoi, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and the New Zealand Symphony, under the direction of conductors such as Ormandy, Markevich, Maxim Shostakovich, Smetacek, Wislocki, Akiyama, Fukumura, Sir Alexander Gibson, George Hurst, Peter Maag, Charles Dutoit, Thomas Sanderling, Ling Tung, Vladimir Verbitsky, Gerard Schwarz, Irwin Hofman, Louis Lane, Timothy Weiss, Eduardo Mata, James de Preist and many other distinguished maestros.

Duphil was invited by the Shanghai Symphony to be their soloist at the China International Arts Festival in Beijing.

An avid chamber musician, Duphil has partnered many renowned artists like Henryk Szeryng, Ruggiero Ricci, Karl Leister, Pierre Fournier, Regis Pasquier, Gerard Poulet, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Hermann Baumann, Cho-Liang Lin, Michel Debost, Alex Klein; among others, the Chester, Portland, St Petersburg, Haydn, Vienna Philharmonic, Musikverein and the American String Quartets, as well as the Salzburg Mozarteum Trío.

Duphil was on the faculty of The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, and Senior Lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist College before being appointed in 1994 as Professor of Pianoforte at the renowned Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in the USA.  She has also given masterclasses in many countries, particularly in Asia where she is regularly invited to hold seminars on piano repertoire.

Duphil has been a judge in many International Piano Contests, such as J. S. Bach International Competition in Germany (Saarbrücken and Würzburg); the Emil Gilels International Piano Competition in Odessa; the Neuhaus International Piano Competition in Russia; the Maracaibo International Piano  Competition in Venezuela, the 2nd Thailand International Piano Competition in September 2011, as well as numerous national and international competitions in the United States.

Duphil has recorded for Polydor, Avila, Telefunken, Marco Polo and Naxos labels.

Jonathan Douglas

Text/Reader

Jonathan Douglas is known to Hong Kong radio listeners as the host of RTHK’s Morning Call and Artbeat.  His book, Noteworthy is based on thirty of his interviews with world renowned arts personalities. Outside the studio he is frequently invited to MC arts and music events, including Radio 4’s Mozart 250th birthday celebration and annual Christmas concerts in the park.

His interest in theatre led him, for several years, to direct RTHK’s radio drama productions for the International Worldplay Festival.  His own acting credits in Hong Kong include Hamlet and Richard II in Shakespeare.  He was invited by the British Council to perform speeches by Shakespeare and Pinter as part of the launch of BBC Prime. He also presented the poetry of Lorca as part of the 2006 New Vision Arts Festival and has been narrator in recent Hong Kong performances of Howard Blake’s The Snowman.  At the 2009 Hong Kong Arts Festival he was guest actor in Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree.  Most recently he performed in a staged adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.

Jonathan is also a self-taught pianist and a singer/song-writer. Recent music performances include his Accompanying Colour for piano and lighting, and his Angst for Adults and Self-Inflicted.  He composed and performed the music for Bigbox Theatre’s productions, including Streetcar Named Desire, and in November 2008 he was invited to compose/perform the Hong Kong British Council’s sixtieth birthday celebration song.  He also performed his Elegy and Rebirth (composed following the Sichuan earthquake) at fund-raising concerts.

In 2008 Jonathan was awarded the MBE for services to the British Arts in Hong Kong.

Andrew Ling

Violin

A native of Hong Kong, Andrew Ling is currently the principal violist of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.  He attended Indiana University, where he completed his undergraduate studies with Henryk Kowalski, and his graduate studies at Indiana University Ik-Hwan Bae.  He was under the tutelage of Cho-Liang Lin at Rice University in Houston.
 
Ling began studying the violin at the age of six under the tutelage of the late Professor Lin Yaoji of the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing.  As a child, he toured Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region performing extensively throughout these regions with the Hong Kong Yip's Children's Choir as its resident violin soloist, as well as appearing regularly as a soloist with the Pan Asia Symphony Orchestra.  His performance of Walton’s Viola Concerto under the baton of international award winning conductor, Jimmy Tsang to　critical acclaim.  He has also collaborated with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra and the China Film Philharmonic Orchestra, and has given recitals in Hong Kong, the United States and Austria.
 
Ling is also an active chamber and orchestral musician, having assumed the role of concertmaster at various orchestras, including the concertmaster of the IU Concert Orchestra, the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra, and has also served as the principal violist of the IU　Philharmonic Orchestra.  He has performed with Cho-Liang Lin, Jaime Laredo, Trey Lee, the Shanghai String Quartet and has been invited as a guest artist at the Chamber Residency of Banff Centre in Canada and the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival.  Ling is a semi-finalist of the Benjamin Britten International Violin Competition.  He has won the violin and viola concerto competitions of Indiana University in 2003 and 2008 respectively, and his performances with the Indiana University orchestras has garnered him high praises, both from audiences and critics.

Ricky Chan

Set Designer

Ricky Chan graduated from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts with an honour degree in 1996, majoring in Set and Costume Design.  He is currently a full-time lecturer of the Theatre Design Department of the Academy, and also the Chairman of Hong Kong Association of Theatre Technicians and Scenographers.  He has designed for over 100 productions, among which many were critically acclaimed.  His recent design for Hong Kong Repertory Theatre’s Dr. Faustus has won him his third Best Set Design Award in the Hong Kong Drama Awards 2011.  Ricky has been active in theatre arts after graduation and has also made a remarkable effort in arts education.  His numerous specialties in arts have nourished his insistent attitude towards life.  In order to better himself, Ricky furthered his studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2009 and gained a Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies.  He hopes that through education, his passion for and pursuit of design and arts will reach a new level.

Ivy Wong

Lighting designer

Ivy Wong graduated from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts with a Bachelor’s degree (Hons) in Fine Arts, majoring in stage lighting design.  Her lighting designs were seen in the Academy‘s productions of Arcadia and Life, Death and the Twilight, and Di Nu Hua (Princess Chang Ping) as part of the programme of the 6th Chinese Drama Festival (Hong Kong).  Wong is currently a theatre freelancer.