'Father Of New HK Music' Doming Lam Dies Aged 96

Hong Kong composer Doming Lam, known as the "The Father of New Music in Hong Kong", has died at the age of 96.

A statement issued by Lam's family said he passed away on Wednesday.

Lam was known for his commitment to modernising Chinese music, and his works combined traditional Chinese melodies with the avant-garde.

His name has also been featured in the “Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians”, making him one of the few Chinese music composers to be included in the classical music encyclopedia..

Lam was born in Macau in 1926, and was one of 21 children. He took up the violin and moved to Hong Kong in 1947, where he helped found the Sino-British Orchestra - the forerunner of the Hong Kong Philharmonic - and was one of its violinists.

He then moved to Canada, where he received a diploma in music composition in 1958, and studied film music at the University of Southern California from 1960 to 1964.

After his studies, he spent some time working in Hollywood but then returned to Hong Kong to work for the radio and TV station, Rediffusion, as a producer of its cultural and entertainment programmes.

In the 1980s, he produced a series of programmes on classical music for RTHK's Radio 4 and TV section, and he was also one of the founders of the Asian Composers League, the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong (CASH) and the Hong Kong Composers Guild.

Lam taught at the Music Department of the University of Hong Kong and was made its composer-in-residence from 1989 to 1994.

In 1999, Lam received the “Hall of Fame Award” from CASH, and in 2020 the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts awarded him an honorary doctorate.