Blog Posts

The movie Parasite (2019) was brought up in yesterday’s class as we were exploring the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho’s Symphony No.7, “Insect Symphony” (1988). I have unsubscribed from Netflix for more than a year (but I have stayed somewhat informed about the potentially addictive by relying on second-hand sources), but Parasite on its own is worth streaming. The first…

In research classes sometimes students wonder about the differences between music analysis and music interpretation. A seemingly simple question that welcomes a range of (simple) answers: one might say, for example, music analysis focuses on the music’s intrinsic elements and structures while music interpretation examines the subjective understanding and experience of music; or, music analysis…

The new school year will begin soon, and it will already mark my fourth year at the Academy of Music at HKBU, though my first year was part-time only (I split my time between HKU and HKBU). There is much to look forward to; new faculty members have joined us, and we will have 90…

This will be my final week in Grand Rapids (next week I will be in Detroit checking out Motown museum … gotta learn some more music history before heading home). I for sure will miss Meeter Center, especially the great people and resources. I have had chances to do or check out musical things, too:…

It’s almost July already, pretty crazy. This will be a relatively short post, as I write mostly to myself to keep track of myself. Two things I wrote about last year did not happen: I did not at all read more Kierkegaard (except for this article on Kierkegaard and imagination, which perhaps does not count,…

Today was the commencement, one of my favourite occasions of the year because of the celebration (and I do like having the chance to wear the Vivienne-Westwood-designed KCL gown from back then heh). I had the pleasure to work with some of the graduates this past semester and I loved reading their essays. One wrote…