Mila: Behind the Scenes
VIEW EVENT DETAILSShort Documentary Screening & Webinar Panel Discussion with Eli Marshall, Candace Chong, S. Alice Mong, Neal Goren, Stefanie Quintin-Avila and Amanda Li. Moderated by Ken Smith
Online Webinar Only
Tuesday, October 6, 20:00 (New York)
Wednesday, October 7, 8:00 (Hong Kong)
Free Admission
Join us for this evening (NY) / morning (HK) panel discussion going behind the scenes of Mila, an original chamber opera exploring the cultural richness and diversity of Hong Kong that played in a sold-out, four-night run at Asia Society Hong Kong Center to great acclaim in January 2018 before touring North America in December 2019.
Members of the international creative team (American-born composer Eli Marshall, Hong Kong playwright Candace Chong, and Asia Society Hong Kong Center’s Executive Director S. Alice Mong) and performers (New York-based music director Neal Goren, Filipina soprano Stefanie Quintin-Avila and Hong Kong-born soprano Amanda Li) will offer two brief conversations, each moderated by critic and journalist Ken Smith.
Between the two discussions will be the world-premiere screening of behind-the-scenes footage from the opera’s North American tour.
The full Mila performance will be available for exclusive viewing for a limited time from Thursday October 1 to Saturday October 10 via private link.
One of the South China Morning Post’s 25 most inspirational and influential women in Hong Kong, playwright Candace Chong received the Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s Best Artist Award for Drama in 2010 and is a five-time winner of the Hong Kong Drama Awards for Best Script. Following a 12-month stay in the U.S. facilitated by the Asian Cultural Council, she became the translator for David Henry Hwang’s 2011 bilingual Broadway comedy Chinglish and was featured in the 2013 Contemporary Chinese Playwriting Series co-presented by New York’s Signature Theatre and Lark Play Development Center. Her 2012 play Wild Boar had its English-language stage premiere in Chicago in 2017. Her 2005 play French Kiss was filmed as Heaven in the Dark (2016) starring Jacky Cheung, and she adapted her highly acclaimed 2009 play Murder in San José for the screen as Fatal Visit (2018) starring Sammi Cheng. Her first opera libretto, for Huang Ruo’s Dr. Sun Yat-sen (2011), premiered in Hong Kong and later made its U.S. premiere in 2014 in a new production by Santa Fe Opera.
Eli Marshall’s orchestral works have been performed in seven countries, with other works premiered at the German Parliament, South Korea’s Gak-won temple, and the Smithsonian Institution. He moved to China in 2003 on a Fulbright Fellowship and in 2011 relocated to Hong Kong, where he remains a permanent resident. After his Unde Pendet Aeternitas for voice and orchestra (written for tenor Warren Mok and the Macau Orchestra) won ASCAP’s 2007 Kaplan Prize, Marshall contributed to the score for Wong Kar Wai’s 2008 Ashes of Time—Redux featuring Yo-Yo Ma. His music for Ann Hui’s Golden Era (2014), featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and vocalist and sheng virtuoso Wu Tong, was nominated for Best Original Film Score at the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards. A recipient of the Douglas Moore Fellowship for American Opera, he was the founding artistic director of the Beijing New Music Ensemble and currently holds a visiting faculty position at Cornell University.
Hong Kong-born soprano Amanda Li made her operatic debut as Bao Chai in Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Festival. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Music and the Director of Choral Activities and Voice at Southwestern College. She holds a doctoral degree from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, with previous studies at Royal Holloway, University of London and the Royal Northern College of Music. She has performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Clark Rundell, and with the group art show Il Tempo del Postino at the Manchester Opera House and Art Basel Festival in Switzerland.
Hailed by the Straits Times as a singer who “possesses a voice with remarkable flexibility and a truly commanding musical presence,” Filipina soprano Stefanie Quintin-Avila’s repertoire ranges from Renaissance to contemporary music, including many world premieres. As a proponent of contemporary music, she is a member of the Ripieno Ensemble PH, a Pierrot ensemble based in Manila, dedicated to the promotion and performance of contemporary music in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia. She has performed as a soloist in various international festivals such as the Asia-Europe New Music Festival (Vietnam), Yilan International Arts Festival (Taiwan), soundSCAPE Festival (Italy), Baroque Festival (Singapore), and the International Bamboo Organ Festival (Philippines). She has been featured in concerts/performances with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, Asia Traditional Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Lyric Opera Orchestra, Hong Kong Bach Choir and Orchestra, and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble.
S. Alice Mong is the Executive Director of Asia Society Hong Kong Center (ASHK). Prior to ASHK, she worked in New York for almost a decade in the non-profit sector in senior management positions. While in New York, she was the Executive Director of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) from 2009 till 2011. She left MOCA in July 2011 after successfully transforming the museum from a New York Chinatown institution into the nation’s premier Chinese-American collection. She also served as the Executive Director for the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American non-profit organization founded by architect, I.M. Pei and cellist, Yo-Yo Ma. Prior to New York, Ms. Mong worked in Hong Kong from 1992 to 2002.
Neal Goren is the founding Artistic Director and Conductor of New York’s Catapult Opera, opening its inaugural 2020-21 season remotely with a series of commissioned 20-minute micro-operas, glimpsing of what opera might encompass in the future. Previously, he founded Gotham Chamber Opera and conducted all of the company’s 18 critically acclaimed productions, from Haydn’s Il Mondo della Luna and Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione to Milhaud's Les Malheurs d’Orphée and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (with period instruments). His guest conducting appearances include the Lincoln Center Festival and Spoleto Festival USA, New York City Opera, and France’s Opera de Nantes and Angers. As a recital accompanist, he has collaborated with such leading operatic vocalists as Leontyne Price (as her exclusive musical collaborator), Kathleen Battle, Harolyn Blackwell, Thomas Hampson, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Hermann Prey. An Associate Professor at New York’s Mannes College of Music, he is also a faculty member of the Accademia Rossiana in Pesaro (Italy) and the Harlem School of the Arts. His book Beyond the Aria is scheduled for publication in December 2020.
Critic and journalist Ken Smith has covered music and cultural developments on five continents for wide range of media. He currently divides his time between New York and Hong Kong, where he is the Asian performing arts critic for the Financial Times of London. A winner of the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award and the 2020 SOPA Award for excellence in arts and cultural reporting, he is a regular arts commentator on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call,” a columnist and consulting editor for OPERA magazine in Shanghai and a critic for Opera magazine in London. Two collections of his writings about music have been translated and published by Beijing Normal University Press.
Co-presented by: