George Tsz-Kwan Lam

GEORGE TSZ-KWAN LAM (he/they) – Hong Kong-born composer George Tsz-Kwan Lam (b. 1981) grew up in both Hong Kong and Winthrop, Massachusetts. George Lam is Associate Professor of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University, having previously served as Assistant Professor of Music at York College, The City University of New York, from 2013 to 2020. Recently, Lam’s works have focused on the idea of placemaking through new music, including his most recent work “The Emigrants” (2018), premiered by the cello-percussion duo New Morse Code. “The Emigrants” tells the stories of seven musicians who emigrated to Queens, New York City, and combines oral history recordings with live music for cello and percussion. “The Emigrants” premiered at the Queens Museum in December 2018, and has been subsequently featured at the 2019 Re:Sound Festival in Cleveland and the 2020 New Music Gathering. George Lam served as the 2018 composer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Opera Company, and is a founding member of the NYC-based new opera ensemble Rhymes With Opera.

Website: www.gtlam.com

PERFORMANCE PROJECT: George’s proposed project is titled “What We Lost In The Fire.” It’s a site-specific digital audio work, where listeners are invited to physically walk through Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood as they listen to oral history recordings about memory and remembering. These speech recordings will move in and out of recognition as they transform into musicalized speech, mirroring the way each one of us remembers and forgets.
Photo of George Lam
“Community means to me to have support from a group of people. It’s about also creating empathy within that group that you not only are related because you’ve something in common, but hopefully you also understand the differences and then you can extend that empathy to outside members and then hopefully, ideally grow that community.”
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