Meet Alan Lau: Visionary Composer in Residence with the Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble
Vancouver Chinese Instrumental Music Society
Alan Lau's Biography
Alan Lau is an accomplished artist and composer who is the composer-in-residence for the Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble. He has collaborated closely with the ensemble on various public concerts and community outreach events over the years. He believes in spreading the chinese culture through the arts and music.
Alan Lau has contributed to various Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble events, including Ten Thousand Springs (2007), Autumn Flight (2014), the Tradition in the Future online symposium (2020), and Future in Past, Part I (2017) and Part II (2022).
As an independent scholar, Alan is a co-author of Qupai in Chinese Music: Melodic Models in Form and Practice (2016) and a contributor to The Oxford Handbook of Music in China and the Chinese Diaspora (2023). He was also an editorial board member of the Asian Musicology Journal.
He studied sheng 笙 (mouth-organ) with VCME’s Zhongxi Wu 吳忠喜, as well as qin 琴 (seven-string zither) with Shuzhi Huang 黃樹志.
Born in Hong Kong, Alan has lived in Vancouver and BC's Peace River Region. He enjoys exploring the dualities and contrasts in life through music and visual arts: East and West; realism vs. abstraction; city life and the northern space.
For more information about our composer-in-residence, check out his art and music on his website.