CHARLES KWONG
鄺展維
Charles Kwong is a composer from Hong Kong. His work spans orchestral and instrumental music, compositions for cross-cultural ensembles, site-specific works, and transdisciplinary projects that extend beyond the traditional concert paradigm.
Kwong’s music has been internationally featured in festivals such as Lucerne Forward, Ultraschall Berlin, Takefu, Ticino Musica, La Roque d'Anthéron, Marvão and IRCAM ManiFeste, among other professional presentations. In recent years he has been commissioned by Ensemble recherche, Lucerne Festival, Takefu International Music Festival, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (HKNME), and Hong Kong Arts Festival, among others. Other renowned groups and musicians who performed Kwong’s music include London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble of Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestra UniMi, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, Francesco Dillon, Mario Caroli, Jeanne-Marie Conquer, Tadashi Tajima, Tosiya Suzuki, Colleen Lee, Edward Gardner, Yip Wing-sie, Christoph Poppen, Pierre-André Valade, Sandro Gorli, among others.
Kwong has developed a long and fruitful collaboration with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta since 2014. Their artistic bonding, which includes a two-season appointment of Kwong as the orchestra’s Artist Associate in 2020-2022, has resulted in multiple commissions that have been showcased locally and as well globally in the orchestra’s overseas tours. With his role in Contemporary Music Research for the orchestra since 2015, Kwong also has been contributing ideas to the orchestra’s planning in contemporary repertoire and commissioning.
Kwong was an artist-in-residence at Initiative Freie Musikszene Zürich in 2024, the Zurich University of the Arts, and Tai Kwun Contemporary Artists’ Studio in 2020. He co-founded PROJECT21st in 2019 and has been its Co-director since then.
Recent highlights of Kwong’s creative output include a new orchestral commission from the Lucerne Festival in 2025 to commemorate the 100th birthday of Pierre Boulez; Made in Laterland (2023), a performative sound installation in collaboration with sound artist Ho Tsz Yeung at the Goethe-Institut Hong Kong; Migrating Tracks (2021), created for ensemble recherche’s collaborative project The New Recherche on the theme of gentrification; and Lullabies (2022), an orchestral piece commissioned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Hong Kong City Hall, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner. In 2016, Ensemble intercontemporain performed Kwong’s sextet Lachrymae (2015) in their first-ever concert in Hong Kong.
Kwong’s interest in site specificity and transdisciplinarity of music led him to leadership roles in several extensive productions in Hong Kong. He was the curator of HKNME’s Our Audible City (2018-2019) - a one-year-long project on the subjects of site-specific music, urban soundscape, sound collecting and sound maps - for which he wrote Atlas, a series of site-specific works tailored for six non-concert spaces in Hong Kong. His research in site-specificity of music subsequently led to the conception of Requiem (2020-2021) commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary, and Lifelike (2021), commissioned by HKNME for performances at the Hong Kong Botanical and Zoological Garden. In 2022 he was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival for Elsewhere, a site-specific composition to be performed at KKL Luzern Concert hall whose world premiere was reviewed by Luzernerzeitung as "enchanting the concert hall".
As a performer, Kwong's performance integrates modular synthesisers, self-made ceramic instruments and live digital signal processing, centering his practice on feedback loops, acoustics, physical touch, circuitry glitches and chaotic models - exploring biomorphic qualities in sound and sonority. His recent performances include appearances at the Rümlingen Festival (2024, Switzerland), and WestK Freespace’s Noise Fest (2024) and Jazz Fest (2023).
Born in Hong Kong, Kwong in his formative years studied music at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and King’s College London, before earning his doctorate in compositions in 2013 from The University of York under the supervision of Thomas Simaku. His artistic development has been shaped by mentorships with Toshio Hosokawa, Francesco Filidei, Mauro Lanza, and Oscar Bianchi, among others. Since 2018, he has been an affiliated faculty member at the University of Hong Kong’s Music Department, where he currently teaches postgraduate modules in composition and sound art.
Since 2023, he has been pursuing a programme in Transdisciplinary Studies at the Zurich University of the Arts as part of an artistic collective with his partner, Sharon Chan. Currently he splits his time between Zurich and Hong Kong.
鄺展維是來自香港的作曲家，創作集中於管弦樂、跨越多種音樂文化的器樂作品、場域特定音樂，以及離開演奏廳範式的跨領域作品。
鄺展維的音樂作品在國際間曾於瑞士琉森Forward音樂節、柏林Ultraschall當代音樂節、日本武生國際音樂節、瑞士提契諾音樂節、IRCAM ManiFeste、法國拉羅克‧昂迪榮國際鋼琴音樂節、葡萄牙馬爾旺國際音樂節以及世界各地之藝術節及音樂節中演出。近年委約者包括德國Ensemble recherche、琉森音樂節、武生國際音樂節、香港小交響樂團、大館當代美術館、香港創樂團、香港藝術節等。其他曾公開演出其作品的知名樂隊及演奏家包括倫敦愛樂樂團、Ensemble intercontemporain、琉森音樂節當代樂團小組、法國廣播愛樂樂團、斯圖加特創聲獨唱團、米蘭大學管弦樂團、意大利Divertimento樂團、澳洲Ensemble Offspring、大提琴演奏家Francesco Dillon、長笛演奏家Mario Caroli、小提琴演奏家Jeanne-Marie Conquer、尺八大師田嶋直士、直笛演奏家鈴木俊哉、鋼琴家李嘉齡、指揮家Edward Gardner、葉詠詩、柏鵬、Pierre-André Valade、Sandro Gorli等。
鄺展維自2014年開始與香港小交響樂團緊密合作，並於2020至2022兩個樂季間擔任駐團藝術家，多首委約作品由樂團屢於本地及國際間海外巡演中發表。此外，鄺展維亦自2015年起為香港小交響樂團擔任當代音樂研究，參與樂團的當代曲目及委約的策劃。
鄺展維為2024年Initiative Freie Musikszene Zürich駐留藝術家，亦曾於2020年獲選參加蘇黎世藝術大學為期四個月的蘇黎世市藝術家駐留計劃，及同年為期半年的大館藝術家工作室駐場計劃。鄺展維於2019年共同創辦藝術創作及協作平台—廿一檔，並自創立以來擔任聯合總監一職。
2025年鄺展維獲琉森音樂節委約，為紀念布列茲百歲誕辰音樂會譜寫管弦樂新作。2023年與聲音藝術家何子洋於香港歌德學院創作表演性聲音裝置作品《再生頻道》。2020至2022年鄺展維獲德國Ensemble recherche邀請，在樂團以士紳化為研究主題的製作－《the new recherche》－之中參與構思及創作，並為此譜寫了委約室樂作品《Migrating Tracks》。為慶祝香港大會堂落成六十周年，鄺展維於2022年獲委約為Edward Gardner所領導的倫敦愛樂樂團譜寫管弦樂新作－《緣起》。2016年法國ensemble intercontemporain在樂團史上首次於香港演出的音樂會中演出了鄺展維的六重奏作品《樹猶如此》。
因著對音樂之場域特定性與跨界性的探索，鄺展維曾領導多個在香港的大型制作。2018至2019年他為香港創樂團策劃以場域特定音樂、城市聲景、聲音採集、聲音地圖為主題的一年計劃《聽得見的城市》，並為此創作一系列共六首於非音樂會場地演出的場域特定音樂作品－《亞特拉斯》。及後兩年繼續發展出另外兩部場域特定作品，分別為2020年由香港創樂團委約於香港動植物公園演出的《栩栩如生》，以及2021年由大館當代美術館委約於大館前監獄及警局建築群內演出的《安魂曲》。2022年他獲琉森音樂節委約，創作於琉森文化會議中心音樂廳演奏的場域特定作品《Elsewhere》，世界首演被琉森日報樂評稱為「為音樂廳施下魔法」。
作為表演者，鄺展維的演出結合模組合成器、自製陶瓷樂器及即時數碼訊號處理，並以回授迴路、空間音響特性、觸覺互動、電路異常及混沌模型為核心，探索聲響中的類生物形態特質。他近期的演出包括瑞士呂姆林根音樂節2024、香港西九自由空間耳降噪2024及自由爵士音樂節2023。
鄺展維生於香港，早年於香港中文大學及倫敦大學國王學院修讀音樂，及後於英國約克大學在Thomas Simaku指導下鑽研作曲，於2013年獲頒授博士學位。他也從細川俊夫、Francesco Filidei、Mauro Lanza及Oscar Bianchi等作曲家之指導中獲重要啟迪。自2018年他起於香港大學音樂系擔任客席講師，現主要指導作曲與聲音藝術的碩士課程。
自2023年起，他與陳楚珊以雙人藝術組合形式，於蘇黎世藝術大學跨學科研究課程深造，現居於香港與蘇黎世兩地。