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The Shun Hing Lecture Series invited Dr. Lam Bun Ching, distinguished alumna of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and renowned composer, as the guest speaker of the third session of the series, where she presented a lecture on 'River Flows, Moon Moves Stone: Poetry - Images - Music'.

Over the years, Dr. Lam Bun Ching has set a number of poems to music in different languages and some of them also exist in Artist Book form. In this lecture, Dr. Lam talked about how to seek inspiration in poetry. She also shared her work in transforming text from one medium to another, and explored the multiple interpretation of language.

Biography of Dr. Lam Bun Ching

Dr. Lam Bun Ching is a prominent Chinese composer. She started studying piano when she was seven and gave her first piano recital at fifteen. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from CUHK in 1976, Dr. Lam was granted a scholarship from the University of California in San Diego, where she studied composition with Bernard Rands, Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds and Pauline Oliveros. Dr. Lam received her PhD Degree from the University of California in San Diego in 1981. She was then invited to teach composition, music theory and piano at Cornish College of the Arts.

Dr. Lam is a renowned composer and her unique musical voice reflects cultural boundaries both in Chinese and Western musical idioms. Her compositions have been recognized through numerous awards, including first prizes at the Aspen Music Festival (1980), the Northwest Composers' Symposium (1982), the Prix de Rome (1992) and the Lili Boulanger Award (1992). In 1987, she received the highest honour at the Shanghai Music Competition, the first international competition for composers held in China. In 1998, she received a fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 2002, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her exceptional creative contribution to the arts. Dr. Lam's compositions have been programmed in music festivals around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Austria, Belgium, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Dr. Lam gives her unwavering support to educating young people. She was invited as one of the guest speakers in the Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series of CUHK's Chung Chi College. Dr. Lam was honoured as the Siu Lien Ling Wong Visiting Fellow in 2012 to share her experience. She was also invited to be a composer-in-residence with the Macao Orchestra and to conduct composition classes and workshops in Hong Kong.

Video recap: http://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/cutv/detail/395?i=0