Wong Sun-tat

Wong Sun-tat is currently Gaohu Associate Principal with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. He studied at the secondary school affiliated to the Central Conservatory of Music before entering the Conservatory itself to study music, where his teachers included Nie Jingyu, Zhang Shao and Zhang Yuming, among many others. He won many accolades and prizes when he was at the Conservatory and was the only overseas student with a government scholarship from China since the 1970’s.

Wong Sun-tat began performing in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan at the age of 7 and was often invited to appear on television. At the age of 8, he was already the erhu solo with the Hong Kong Children’s Choir on their performing tour to the United States. He shared the stage with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in the same year at a fund-raising concert held at the Hong Kong Coliseum and his performance won him the acclaim as a ‘child prodigy’. James Wong, the famous media personality and composer in Hong Kong, praised the young boy as ‘a future maestro’ and said in his column in Ming Pao Daily that Sun-tat presented a remarkable and brilliant stage presence. Wong Sun-tat has given solo recitals in Hong Kong and Beijing, which were covered and telecast on CCTVB. As a father-and-son duo, he and Wong On-yuen have given concerts in the United States, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Singapore and have appeared in the International Arts Festival of Taiwan, Macao Arts Festival, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Singapore Arts Festival and the Copenhagen Arts Festival. The orchestras he has performed with include Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Singapore Chinese Orchestra, Macao Chinese Orchestra, National Chinese Orchestra of Taiwan, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, among others. He has performed under the baton of Yan Huichang, Tsung Yeh, Chen Zuohuang, Qu Chunquan, Wang Yongji, Hu Bingxiu, Yoshikazu Fukumura and Kenneth Schermerhorn.

At the age of 9, Wong was the Champion, Erhu (Open Section) at the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival and was the youngest champion ever in the history of this section. This was followed by many more honours and top positions at international erhu competitions held in China and Taiwan, making him the only contestant from Hong Kong to have won a position of top three in such international events. Wong has two solo albums to date.

A critique in New York Times has this to say of his performance with his father, Wong On-yuen, “The most exciting moment was when the father and son performed two erhu duets as encores… the beautiful notes and the rich, lyrical melody brought to the audience truly remarkable sounds in pure Chinese style.”