Whispers of Reality and Reverie (2025) for Wind Orchestra

SO Ka-wai obtained both undergraduate and M.Phil degree at Hong Kong Baptist University, majoring music composition under the supervision of Prof. Christopher Keyes and Dr. Christopher Coleman. His works have been premiered local and overseas, including Asian Composers League Conference and Festival (2011 in Taipei, 2015 in Philippines), Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival (Indonesia), the XVI World Saxophone Congress (Scotland) and Kagoshima Asian Youth Arts Festival (Japan). Moreover, his works were frequently selected as set pieces in the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival.

Influenced from his musical training, SO Ka-wai is one of the young composers focusing on composing and arranging music for wind band. SO has received commissions for writing new works, such as wind orchestra suite “Four Supernatural Constellations”, saxophone concerto “Infatuazione” and symphonic poem “The Utterance of Wind”. During 2012-13, he was commissioned by Parson Wind Orchestra to arrange a set of Cantonpop songs of Kolor and premiered into the concerts. 

Apart from working as a composer, he is an active clarinetist. Learning clarinet from the age of thirteen with Mr. Cheung Wan, Mr. Andrew Simon and Mr. Martin Choy Kwok-tin while performed in the master-class conducted by Dr. David Pino during studying undergraduate at HKBU, he was a member of Hong Kong Youth Symphonic Band and the Klappen Ensemble. He is now the concertmaster of the Parsons Wind Orchestra with assisting the coaching and managing duties in the ensemble.