- Five Films to Watch About Stonewall … Besides Stonewall - 29 September, 2015
- Symphony: An interview with Raymond Yiu - 25 August, 2015
- Raymond Yiu’s Symphony to debut at BBC Proms - 12 August, 2015
Could you image a world where you would see people around the gay scene, meet them, and familiarize with them only for them to disappear and find out later they died of AIDS? Well, that world was 1992 London which is the inspiration behind Raymond Yiu’s Symphony, a five piece meditation debuting later this month on 25 August 2015.
Raymond Yiu is a composer, jazz pianist, conductor, and music writer who has came to London from Hong Kong in 1990. Yiu has always been musically inclined. He began taking piano lessons at 4 years old, began writing music as a teenage, and taught himself how to compose music while he was studying at Imperial College before making his performance debut in 1999.
Raymond Yiu has accumulated quite the resume since. Yiu’s work spans from Orchestral and Chamber to Ensemble and Choral, and his works have won him multiple awards including the 2003 George Butterworth Award, a Bliss Trust Composer Bursary in 2009, and the 2010 BASCA British Composer Awards in the Chamber category. Yiu’s work also won him a scholarship from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he is studying for his doctorate.
Raymond Yiu composition will be performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Edward Gardner at the BBC Proms’ Royal Albert Hall. Symphony is composed of five different parts inspired by multiple music artists and genres. Some notable artist influences include The Bee Gees, Basil Bunting, and Scarlatta.
The piece also transitions between and blends poetry, disco, and hymnals among other genres and elements to capture the emotions of what it was like to be a part of the gay scene in the 90s when AIDS was devastating the community.
The performance will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and will be available for up to 30 days after the event on the BBC Proms website.
