GUEST ARTIST
• Warren LEE (Guest Pianist 2014, 2017 | Hong Kong, China)
• Isabelle RIBOT (Guest Painter 2017 | France)
• Niangu WU (Guest Artist 2018 | China)
WARREN LEE | Hong Kong, China
– Guest Pianist
Since his televised début with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of six, Hong Kong-born pianist Warren Lee embarked on a lifelong career in music, both on and off the stage. The South China Morning Post wrote after his performance with the Macau Chamber Orchestra in 1988, “Warren Lee’s performance bore out the insight… that exceptional artists are not so much people to be praised as phenomena to be treasured, bearers of a power altogether greater than the poor vessels that contain it.” His life as a child prodigy was documented on Hong Kong Television Broadcasts’ Sunday’s File in 1993, which has become a teaching reference on “gifted education” in universities.
A scholar graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and Yale School of Music, Warren was the first-prize winner of the 1995 Stravinsky Awards International Piano Competition and the Grand Prix Ivo Pogorelich, as a result of which he made his European début at the Pogorelich Festival in Germany at the age of 18. Hailed by The Straits Times as a musician with “superb pianism… a wonderful sense of colour and impeccably controlled articulation”, Warren’s artistry has brought him to concert halls on four continents, gracing stages of all sizes and forms, and in collaboration with leading international artists and orchestras.
Warren’s discography includes multiple acclaimed albums of solo and chamber music repertoire on Universal Music (Hong Kong) and Naxos. The American Record Guide calls him a “first-rate artist”. A Steinway Artist since 2009, he was among the first artists to record on Steinway’s SPIRIO upon its launch in 2016.
Currently the Music Director of St. Paul’s Co-educational College which received the Yale School of Music Cultural Leadership Citation in 2016, Warren co-currently serves as a guest professor at the Central Conservatory of Music EOS Orchestra Academy, the Hong Kong Representative of Royal Academy of Music, as well as an adjunct faculty and guest artist in various institutions around the world. He also hosts a programme on Radio Television Hong Kong Radio 4, which he has a long-standing relationship with since his début broadcast in 1991.
As a versatile composer, Warren’s choral works have been gaining an international reputation, with works performed and published in Asia, Europe and North America. His work House Rules, based on the Nokia ringtone, won the 2nd Prize of the Gianni Bergamo Classic Music Award in Switzerland in 2013. Adding to his expanding catalogue that encompasses various genres, his series of sight-reading method, Sight-Reading Plus, was published in 2015.
With a vision of bettering the community through the art, Warren enjoys a long history of engagement in charity projects with organizations such as the Yale-China Association, SAR Philharmonic, Sowers Actions and Music Children Foundation. In recognition of his achievements in the fields of performing arts and education, Warren received the Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award in Hong Kong in 2012 and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2015.
ISABELLE RIBOT | France
– Guest Painter
She discovered Brazil for the first time in 1986 and that country became a real source of inspiration. She spent a time in São Paulo and feelings arose. This was the starting point of her creative universe.
That intense and emotional experience surprised her. She was enchanted by the idea of the nostalgy and the future cohabiting in the huge city. And there, she met amazing people.
Sao Paulo is like a mosaic of untied but fertile worlds…
At the beginning, there is a text, a short story. .. which Isabelle Ribot draws and paints on paper or canvas rolls.
Small or big characters start appearing, colors, invented maps, symbols start filling the scene… the initial scenario becomes a tale, then a journey which offers different faces and various paths.
Listening, loving, dreaming, inventing are the words that illustrate this fantasy along with deep and meaningful colors – the reds, lavenders, blues, pinks, greys, blacks and whites…
The paintings can also become games through reproductions of them.
A game is a representation which acts as a metaphor. It translates the adventures told in a painting into an object.
Or it plays a role just like an anedoct.
These pieces work like games governed by rules never quite clear, and often related to chance.
Isabelle Ribot’s works turns itself into an interactive experience.
NIANGU WU | China
– Guest Artist
· Contracted artist of Singulart gallery in Paris, France
· Partner artist of Artmo global art network in Germany
· Chinese national first-class artist
· Financial attributes international contemporary artist
· One of the 100 most influential Chinese arts and crafts artists in the world
· Visiting professor of the department of fine arts, academy of fine arts, Tsinghua University
· Cover figure of Asia News Weekly
· Asian News Figure
· Representative of Chinese contemporary ink wash splashed-color expressionist painter
· Representative of the 15th China Charity Image Ambassador Painter
· Figure in the annals of Jiangyou City (county) in the hometown of Li Bai
Wu Niangu was born in 1973, and hails from Hanzeng, Jiangyou, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province. He is a native of Wujia Lion Mountain, Anju District, Suining City, Sichuan Province, and is originally a native of Prefecture of Sinan in Guizhou.
Wu Niangu learned skills form the master from an early age. Edified by the traditional arts, he built a foundation for the studies of Chinese ancient civilization and poetry, traced known works and studied ancient techniques. He learned Chinese paintings, fresco restoration of the ancient temple roads and carving techniques of clay sculpture Buddha from the masters. He is an expert in the painting and carving techniques of the clay sculpture immortals in Buddhism and Taoism. When he was young, he became attached to Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. He visited masters and friends over mountains and rivers to worship in the temple and comprehend the doctrines. Not only skilled in studying the techniques of masters, he also learned the thinking methods from the predecessors. His works has conducted in-depth art exploration mainly in the form of ink painting and oil painting splash-color to this day.
In 2017. the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held. ASIAWEEK magazine was designated as one of the conference’s on-site reception periodicals. The September issue of ASIAWEEK with Wu Niangu on its cover was honored to be present at the 19th National Conference. From December 2017 to February 2018, Wu Niangu was invited by the Universal Chinese Association in the USA to participate in the Miami International Chinese Culture and Arts Festival in the USA. The Miami International Chinese Culture and Arts Festival selected 100 works from the works of 1000 Chinese crafts and artisan masters across the world as “The world’s 100 influential Chinese craft artists “. Three works of Wu Niangu were on the list.
After the exhibition, the three works were collected by the U.S. Universal Culture Collection Museum and exhibited in the United States in the long term. At the same time, the three works and Wu Niangu’s profile were published on the world-renowned media U.S. magazine “Universal Chinese”. The magazine is distributed to 46 countries around the world and collected by over 300 prestigious public picture galleries, such as China’s Peking University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Asia’s third largest library, the Nanjing Library, and so on.
Wu Niangu Chronology
· The world’s 100 influential Chinese craft artists.
· In 2013: Wu Niangu was interviewed by Boss Magazine and Tibet Aviation Magazine.
· In 2015: Wu Niangu was invited to participate in the Nepal Tibetan Tantra Thangka Art Exhibition.
· In 2016: Wu Niangu was rated as the National-level Artist by the Ministry of Culture.
· In 2016, Wu Niangu was elected as the personage of Jiangyou City (County) Records in Sichuan Province, and ranked 21st in the Records of Jiangyou City (County), in which poet Li Bai in the Tang Dynasty, and modern Strait – Hong Kong.
· In 2017: Wu Niangu was invited to participate in the International Art Exhibition and the International Non-Legacy Culture and Arts Festival.
· In 2017: Wu Niangu was honored to be featured on the cover of the ASIAWEEK magazine and became the Asian news figure.
· In 2017: The September issue of the ASIAWEEK magazine with Wu Niangu on its cover was designated as one of the on-site reception periodicals of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
· In 2017: Wu Niangu was featured on the cover of the Manager Journal magazine.
· In 2017: Chinese Network of France reported on Wu Niangu.
· In 2018: In January, Wu Niangu was invited by CCTV’s program “The Road to Success” to participate the selection of the “Times Model 15th Chinese Public Welfare Figure” and Wu Niangu was rated as “China’s 15th Ambassador of Public Welfare – Artist Representative”.
· In 2018: In May, Wu Niangu was invited by Shanghai Music Republic & Fashion Art Invitational Exhibition of Shanghai Style Masters.
