About Mr. Tong Leung-tak

Tong Leung-tak (1938–2010), a former senior music officer at the Hong Kong Music Office (HKMO), is vividly remembered by the Chinese music community in Hong Kong as an influential erhu performer, educator, conductor, and composer whose career spanned sixty years. Born in Shanghai to a musically talented family, Tong began learning and performing Chinese instruments at a young age. He made his name in the early 1950s performing Jiangnan sizhu ("silk-and-bamboo" music from the Jiangnan region) on the erhu and the pipa with his family members in the "Tangjiaban" ("Tong family") ensemble, and Jiangnan sizhu remained a genre with which he was closely associated throughout his life.

In 1956, he joined Beijing's Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio Orchestra (Xinying yuetuan), where his musical life first branched out into composing, arranging, and educating. During his two decades in Beijing, Tong chaired and directed various ensembles, composed documentary film scores, arranged a number of film scores into concert pieces (the most celebrated ones being erhu solos and concertos), and recorded some of his own works. He also co-authored Erhu yanzoufa ("Erhu Performance Methods and Techniques") with fellow erhu performer Zhang Shao, which soon became a classic in erhu pedagogy.

In 1977, Tong moved to Hong Kong and began a new chapter in his career, one that firmly established his place as a Chinese music educator. He joined the HKMO in 1978 while performing as assistant concertmaster of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. He also taught at two other important music institutions in Hong Kong—the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. During his tenure as a senior music officer at HKMO, he worked with instructors to prepare syllabi and teaching materials for nineteen Chinese instruments and build a graded examination scheme for Chinese instrumental music. The results of his educational endeavor were evident in the numerous student concerts he directed, not only at local venues and events, but also in the form of tours to such countries and regions as Mainland China, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Italy, Israel, the Philippines, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Tong announced retirement in 1998 but continued to advise various Chinese music performing groups and institutions in Hong Kong. Many of his students went on to become established musicians and educators in Hong Kong and beyond.

This collection highlights Tong's work as a composer, a lesser-known aspect of his multi-faceted career. A look at his oeuvre reveals a range of musical interests and inspirations as well as the contexts in which he found them: re-arrangements of classics in his native musical language, Jiangnan sizhu, from his peak as a performer in the 1960s; erhu melodies stemming from his experience living with Chinese communist soldiers in Tibet; orchestral renderings of folk tunes from various regions in Mainland China; explorations of approaches to arranging qin (seven-string zither) music with different instrumental combinations; and functional music written for celebrations and festivals at the HKMO. Many of his compositions and arrangements reflect not only his lifelong love for folk musical elements and playing techniques, but also a penchant for simple and direct delivery of musical emotions and narratives; these characteristics render his music very suitable for pedagogical purposes.

Tong passed away in 2010 after a battle with long-term illness, but his story lives on. The scores included in this collection and their accompanying descriptions offer a great opportunity to retrace Tong's musical journey; available in digital format and open for public access, they will continue to inspire generations of Chinese music students to come.

Reference List

See Chinese version for a list of his compositions, pedagogical writings, as well as a bibliography.