These two pieces are means a lot to my friend, so i transcribed the scores for her graduation concert.

Gabriel's Oboe x Down by the Sally Gardens (arranged for Oboe and Wind Orchestra)(2016)

Escape from the Haunted Night is a piece for percussion sextet, dedicated to my percussion friends in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is a story describing a girl escaping from an unknown place back to the city. In the piece, you will listen different sounds you may have missed in your daily life, such as the sound of traffic lights, thundering and raining. Of course, you will hear some haunted sounds!

The piece is divided into two large sections: a slow section and a fast section. The whole idea in this work uses the set class ‘0148’, basically two tritones plus a chromatic note in all forms, to develop the theme vertically and horizontally. In the fast section, the melodic theme will be different from the slow section, but you will hear the second theme spiced up with the first one. The rhythmic pattern of the traffic lights will also be heard in both sections.

Escape From The Haunted Night (for Percussion Sextet)(2017)

The Arc is a piece dedicated to two of my friends Marco Leung and William Fu for their newly established duet “The Arc”. They are both graduates from CUHK music and we used to talk a lot about composing and performing. It was first premiered in London in September 2018.

I started to think how I could create something that could represent the arc, so I tried to use lots of arc shape melodies in both piano and flute throughout the piece. There is also a theme and variation in the middle part, with five variations of different characters. The interesting part is that there is a call and response in the introduction and the end of the piece, which the flute part is mimicking the theme in the middle with an extension. The harmony that the audience hears will be d minor but the “theme” is in Db major.

The Arc (for Flute and Piano)(2018)

I. Andante
II. Adagio
III. Allegro

This is for my friend's graduation concert again ;) So I like the sound of bass trombone because it's range is just too wide

Trio for Horn, Bass Trombone and Piano (2016)

Emotions is a suite consists of three movements: Joy, Fear and Sadness. I got inspired by the 5 emotions in the film “Inside Out”, I then hope to compose something that can represent different emotions. At that time, my friend Ginny Tin found me to compose a piece for piccolo trio to perform in her graduation concert because there are really few pieces written for piccolo trio.

It was not an easy task because piccolo has a very high pitch, so I wanted to find something which has a lower pitch and could blend into the trio. When I was still deciding, my friends next to me entertained themselves by blowing glass bottles, so I tried to compose music using the bottles with different water level and surprisingly the effect was good.

The trio starts with C major and chromatic melodies which can represent joy and happiness. The three piccolos are like three birds singing on the tree. As the glass bottle gave me a sorrowful and empty sound, I only added them in the 2nd and 3rd movement as the harmony. The whole piece ended with a picardy 3rd, meaning that the fear could be resolved after all.

Emotions (for 3 Piccolos and Glass Bottles) (2018)

I. Down in the Forest
II. Dawn

I would always like to write something about the mysterious forest and the nature. However, when I started to plan this piece, I decided to write something with a sense of humor. Not only putting tuba and euphonium on the stage, but also bringing the sounds of dawn. 

Have you ever known what are the animals doing before the sun rises? The day is all started by the rooster waking up the birds and other animals. Then the fox appears when the music suddenly changes the style, it is trying to steal food from others before the sun rises. Then you'll hear the theme, which is the sun, scares away the fox and this ends the 1st movement.

The 2nd movement is basically reproducing the dawn and you will hear the theme appears, but the mood has suddenly changed. By describing the layers of clouds, they move and disperse at last, leaving the calmest and the purest sky.

*The euphonium lowered one octave in the beginning and the end of 2nd movement because of some technical problems

Sunrise (for Tuba Quartet)(2016)

This is a piece composed during exam period when my brain sucked. I thought Flute and Tuba are not friends, but turns out they merge quite well (next time I should write much lower notes for Tuba and higher notes for flute! :) ) and it was me who played the piano spoiled the performance omg.

Trio For Flute, Tuba and Piano (2016)

I. Launch
II. Dream
III. Dance
IV. Attack

The whole idea of composing a violin concerto started when I listened to my friends’ graduation concert during my times in university. Therefore, I decided to do something crazy before I graduate, it is going to be one of the unforgettable memories. I always like to dream and have crazy thoughts that fill with adventures and fantasies, Space Attack! – this title was then came up on my mind, so I am going to do blend in all the music features I like into my own fantasy piece: classic tidy rhythms, film music’s fantastic harmonies, touching melodies, virtuosic violin techniques… and more. Space Attack! is about a war in the universe with thousands of astronauts as soldiers to fight with the unknown imaginary creatures. In 22nd century, war will not exist on Earth anymore because we have to fight with other creatures in the universe to save our planet. Through this piece, the solo violinist will lead you to the inner heart of the astronauts and feel their mixed feelings during the war.

The motif of this piece is a phrase consist of four notes in an order of “Perfect 5th-minor 2nd-Perfect 5th”, or sometimes mixing up the order in a pitch class set “0158” as it gives different feelings by defining its major or minor tonality. The 1st movement 'Launch' begins and ends with a minor major 7th chord to indicate the start of our journey to the universe. The strings sections with tidy rhythms represent a great number of soldiers in this journey.

Then you’ll hear a slow 2nd movement that is the ‘Dream’ of the astronauts. When you have to leave your homeland and you may not be able to go back, dreams may be the only way to see your friends, your family and your love ones. Dreams often go with happy times, the 3rd movement ‘Dance’ will be the last piece of joy before the war starts, astronauts are having fun, but are they really feeling relax? You may guess the answer when you listen to the tonality of this dance music.

So, the war finally comes in the 4th movement ‘Attack’. Listen to the tuba and strings at the beginning. Can you feel something horrible is going to happen? Then listen to the peaceful music in the middle of the movement, oh I am dreaming again, why the good times is always passing so fast? Anyways, we might have knocked down the creature, but another war is awaiting in somewhere else…

PS. this is a computer audio file instead of a real performance. Any orchestra can help me to do this? <3 
PPS. I will change some of the the harp parts to piano

Space Attack (for Violin and Orchestra) (2018)

Harmony is a piece commissioned for the CUHK Art Museum as the theme song in their opening ceremony of the art exhibition " Legacy of the Heavenly Breeze: The Art of Gao Qifeng, Chao Shao-an and Au Ho-nien” . The theme of the artworks was also very innovative at that time, they started to use new fusion method of Chinese and Western painting techniques for their artworks. Therefore I would also like to do some fusion in my music. I put some Chinese elements and different pentatonic scales, it also became very rhythmic and dynamic in the middle and the climax, to represent the change and the new era.

Harmony 融 for Flute, Violin, Cello and Zheng (2018)

Think of Me (Andrew Lloyd Webber) from The Phantom of the Opera.

Elby Kwok

Popular tracks