ARTIST AVATAR
Composer
Meilina Tsui
KAZAKHSTAN/HONG KONG/UNITED STATES

About

Biography

Meilina Tsui, making her HGO debut, is a composer, pianist, singer-songwriter, advocate for youth artistic development, and educator. Her music, described by The Aspen Times as "irresistible, and emotionally convincing," has been performed across Asia, Europe, the United States, and in the Middle East. In 2023, Tsui’s Nomadic Trails for chamber orchestra was selected from a competitive nationwide call for scores by the American Composers Orchestra. The piece also won the 2021 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award from the University of Michigan and the 2022 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award. Her String Quartet No. 2 "Kazakh Steppe” has received many performances around the world and numerous awards, including the 2018 Mivos Composition Prize for Chinese Composers worldwide. In 2018, Tsui was the main featured composer at the “Beyond Boundaries, Beyond Time: Hong Kong-Kazakhstan” concert that marked the Secretary for Hong Kong Home Affairs Bureau’s first official visit to Kazakhstan. In celebration of the HKSAR’s 20th anniversary in 2017, Tsui was the youngest and only female composer featured at the London “Hong Kong Music Series,” where her Six Miniature Pieces of Yin and Yang for two pianos was performed to great acclaim. Among a host of notable commissions, Tsui wrote a piece called Ay-Ay, Bopem (a Kazakh Lullaby Without Words), commissioned by principal members of the Lexington Philharmonic and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras for the ArtsWave Isolation Commissions, centered on themes of racial injustice and cultural healing. She holds music degrees from University of Michigan, King’s College London, and Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Repertoire

HGO DEBUT