Soprano Alison Lau is emerging as one of Hong Kong’s rising young artists. She is a versatile singer with a passion for Baroque music and art songs. Alison has recently graduated with a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Ms Lisa Saffer. In 2013, she has graduated from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts under the tutelage of Madam Ella Kiang. Alison is currently a Young Artist at the Jockey Club Opera Hong Kong Young Artist Development Programme.
In 2014, Alison co-founded Camerata Antiqua, an ensemble of young local musicians devoted to exploring and performing Baroque music. She was also selected to attend the Tafelmusik Summer Baroque Institute in Toronto, and won the Outstanding Performance Award at the MIMF Vocal Competition in New York.
While a student at the HKAPA, Alison has made her solo debut with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, was featured by RTHK Channel 4 in a series of recordings and documentaries “Young Music Makers 2012” and was a winner of the HKAPA Concerto Competition.
As an opera singer, Alison has won critical acclaim for her performance as “a beautiful Helena with great promise dramatically and vocally” (Time-Out Magazine) and “The long arias sung by soprano Alison Lau Cheuk-Yan as Helena were seamless in expressing their misgiving or statement of love.” (South China Morning Post) in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Her opera roles include Despina in Cosi fan tutte, Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro, Musetta in La Boheme, Valencienne in The Merry Widow, Amore in L’incoronazione di Poppea, the Second Woman in Dido and Aeneas, as well as excerpts of Der Rosenkavalier as Sophie, and Gilda in Rigoletto.
Alison is also an active recitalist and concert singer, recent performances include Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, Vivaldi’s In Furore Iustissimae Irae, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Kleine Orgelmesse, Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate and Missa Brevis in F, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Mendelssohn’s Hear my prayer, Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Brahms’ German Requiem, Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony.
Alison’s training at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and New England Conservatory had been made possible by the generous support of the Opera Hong Kong K. Wah International Vocal Scholarship, Foundation for the Arts and Music in Asia Vocal Scholarship, the Andy Anselmo Scholarship in Voice and the NEC Merit Award and Scholarship, The Hong Kong Children’s Choir Vocal Scholarship and the Michael Rippon Memorial Vocal Scholarship.
Alison currently resides in Hong Kong and enjoys a balanced career of performing and teaching. She is enthusiastic about teaching not only a healthy singing technique, but also to inspire students to dig deeper into the music, to understand the history, musical choices and the intention of the poet and the composer.
Updates and performance information can be found on www.alisonlau.com
(Updated on 6 Oct 2017)