In Friday’s (2/6) South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Oliver Chou writes that Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the city’s “top science university, has seen a surge in creative arts, with more than a quarter of its students taking up the arts curriculum. ‘1,600 of our 8,000 students in this academic year are taking music courses,’ said James Lee, dean of the school of humanities and social science…. Lee attributed the boom to the introduction of the Intimacy of Creativity programme in 2010. Since then, attendance for classical music events at HKUST has risen from 200 to 6,000. Last week, a new 400-seat concert hall was opened on campus and another 1,000-seat venue is expected by 2018. The music curriculum will be upgraded from just an elective course to an academic minor by this year’s autumn semester…. Bright Sheng, the programme’s artistic director and a Michigan-based composer, said …, ‘We want students to appreciate the thinking process and the power of imagination of composers—which can be applicable to all sectors, including business and engineering.’ ” The program’s current composer fellows are David Hertzberg (U.S.); Ruben Naeff (Netherlands); Clint Needham (U.S.); Ian Ng (Hong Kong); Scott Ordway (U.S.); and Wang A-Mao (China).
Posted February 11, 2015
