Dennis Wu

Dennis Wu (b. 1978) completed his undergraduate study of music in The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2000, and further obtained a master’s degree in music composition in 2002. His composition repertoire includes a number of chamber music, choral music, vocal music and arrangements for various ensembles. His four-movement choral suite Below the Kau To Shan was premiered by the The Chinese University of Hong Kong Chorus and is repeatedly performed in Hong Kong.

Mr. Wu is frequently demanded as speakers in talks and workshops, delivering an average of 40 talks a year in concert venues, lecture theatres, school halls and classrooms. These include pre-concert talks for concert audience, programme host for live concert and concert telecast, seminars of music criticism for secondary school students, public lectures on music history, meet-the-artists and music appreciation for school children on a wide variety of topics. These are commissioned by numerous parties, including the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, International Association of Theatre Critics (Hong Kong), Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, Macao International Music Festival, Musicus Fest and many others. His lecture series Journeys through Music, presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, focuses on composers and the historical contexts of music at the time, has run for eight weeks in three consecutive years between 2013 and 2019, with warm receptions from a well attended audience. In 2021 he has produced a series of online talks for Leisure and Cultural Services Department, titled Eight History-Making Musical Inventions, and in 2023 he started a brand new talk series on classical music history that was totally sold out for all episodes.

Being an active music writer, Mr. Wu’s writings are widely printed on major Hong Kong newspapers and magazines. He is a regular contributor of Hifi Review and appears on RTHK Radio 4 as a music critic. He writes music annotations for Hong Kong Arts Festival, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival and musicians like Angela Hewitt, Louis Lortie, Colleen Lee and Die Konzertisten. He is a part-time lecturer at the School of Professional and Continuing Education of University of Hong Kong on courses of writing for classical music.

He has also curated several concert projects, among them A Poet and His Muse dedicated to the poet Yu Kwang-chung in 2013, with himself reading the poet’s selected writings in the concert. The concert received critical acclaims, with the presence of the poet in the première and four sold-out performances. In this occasion he had his music The Fire of Rebirth premiered, together with numerous world premières by Hong Kong composers. This concert was performed again in Singapore, Taipei and Kaohsiung.

Mr. Wu has been appointed a number of advisory posts. He is currently Arts Advisor for Arts Criticism of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council; Assessor for Arts Criticism, Music and Arts Education of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council; Expert Advisor for the Music Office, Leisure and Cultural Services Department; and he served as a jury for Macao Cultural Affair Bureau in 2014–17. He is also a regular freelance presenter and producer at Radio Television Hong Kong, having regular programmes on Radio 4.

Other than works on classical music, he spends some of his time on web technology, being a technical consultant and analyst on web builds, mobile app developments and digital marketing strategy. He was a mentor of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks mentorship programme, being a mentor to one of the incubating technology companies. He builds his own website, www.denniswu.com, as an online archive of his writing activities. He has started his tenure as the Director of Marketing of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra since February 2022.