Strings Theory: The Maverick Musicians!

Strings Theory: The Maverick Musicians! Tim Chen and Juan Andrés Carmona are shaking up Hong Kong's classical performance scene, and training the next generation of musicians to keep shaking it. Elizabeth Kerr reports It’s sweltering outside. The stairwell and lift of DB North Community Centre are stuffy and warm, but the room where partners in musical crime Tim Chen and Juan Andrés Carmona are rehearsing with their fledgling DB Youth Orchestra (DBYO) is cool and comfortable. It’s a typical public space: unfussy and utilitarian, but it’s also relaxed and welcoming. On this day, Juan is running three of the DBYO’s musicians, Ella, Mat t and Serena, all in their early teens, through Strauss, Pachelbel and You Raise Me Up, made famous by Josh Groban and boy band Westlife. Tim picks up a violin to check its tuning, and he makes the few seconds of Canon (in D) sound ef for tless. These kids are in good hands. GETTING ESTABLISHED Tim and Juan make quite a pair. Tim is youthful and verbose; his enthusiasm for the violin and music in general is visible. He’s been playing since he was about five, learning he had per fect pitch, which he didn’t even fully understand, in high school. Juan is more low-key, with an air of serendipity about him, which in many ways is what brought him to Hong Kong. The pair met when they were studying at London’s Trinity Laban Conser vatoire of Music and Dance and shared a house. Juan was there from Almería, in southern Spain. Tim headed back to Hong Kong after finishing his degrees, but Juan, also a violinist had a year to go, and he was less sure of what he wanted to do. Hong Kong was Tim’s idea. “Oh, he came because of me!” he declares. “I wasn’t sure if I should stay in London or go back to Spain,” recalls Juan. “So I went home for a few months and we talked and Tim started getting quite busy here in Hong Kong and suggested I come over. I trusted him, so I came for a visit, and he helped me connect to an orchestra, and it’s been seven years already.” Juan’s since become a regular with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong and an instructor at Discovery Bay International School. Alongside his parents, Tim was an early adopter of DB, and a workload that sees him roaming all around Hong Kong (to his own music studio, to Kellett School), and up to Shenzhen for music camps is among the reasons he resettled here when he got back from London. DB is ideal for decompressing. “I grew up in Tsuen Wan, but I’ve lived in Discovery Bay since 1995. The funny thing is when I first moved here, aged around seven or eight, it was the middle of nowhere – there was no Tung Chung, no Sunny Bay, only the ferry. It was so inconvenient,” Tim recalls with a chuckle. “But my parents liked the vibe, the atmosphere, the community; there was less pollution. Now they feel like this is it. They’re not planning to move again. And when I came back from the UK after 10 years, well,” he hedges a bit. “I don’t really like Tsim Sha Tsui, I don’t like Causeway Bay. Now when friends suggest going out for dinner, it’s ‘You mean the plaza right?’ Outside DB is too far now.” Ironically, Juan lives in Causeway Bay. MAKING SOME NOISE In making Hong Kong homebase, both Tim and Juan wanted to play in an orchestra according to their own rules, without a traditional structure, and to maybe instil that passion in a younger generation. Enter Asiartic, a music education organisation, the two-year-old Asiartic Camerata chamber orchestra, and of course the DBYO (for kids elementary to high school-aged; get details at tim@tim-chen.com, or Facebook @Discovery Bay Youth Orchestra). Putting together a professional orchestra with other freelance musicians around the city for Asiartic Camerata wasn’t difficult; Hong Kong is teeming with talent and the group has already found modest success with small, intimate performances in venues like Soho House (its next is at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in September). The Camerata is an odd duck, to be sure. “We do it without a conductor, which is very unusual,” says Tim. “We don’t want to be all, ‘I’m the boss’: everyone’s the same; any ideas and comments are equal. We just want to work together as a group; that’s the purpose. Same for the DB Youth Orchestra.” Indeed, it was the kids that caught Tim’s attention. As a typical Hong Kong student back in the day, he understood music class is often treated as a way to juice high school and university applications, but for the students with genuine interest – or who simply enjoy playing – outlets are few and far between. “I said to Juan, ‘I teach in DB, you teach in DB, why don’t we form a youth orchestra?’ There wasn’t much going on in DB outside of school; the term ends, the orchestra stops, and the kids don’t really get any one-to-one lessons beyond a certain level. In school, you don’t get a lot of chances to play your part and stand out. And that’s a shame. DBYO is a chamber group that meets to play music together. I’m trying to get the kids to understand exams are not the main purpose of music.” It’s paying off. The DBYO is just a few months old, with a handful of musicians so far, but Tim hopes it will grow, particularly after parents who see their kids blossom away from grading pressures talk to other parents. Luckily, Tim and Juan have allies in the community centre management, which generously lends its rehearsal and performance spaces, including the auditorium. At today’s rehearsal, everyone’s focused on the Summer Concert, the DBYO’s second, coming up in a few days . Tim admits some of the kids get a bit of stage fright and push back on stepping into the spotlight, but he’s pleased to note 100% get over it. “So many enjoy it, and they’re doing really well. Even if we only had two or three kids, we wouldn’t give it up.” In the coming months and years, Tim and Juan will expand their educational reach at Asiartic to welcome kids from around the region, and get involved with more charity work – as performers and teachers for kids with fewer music opportunities. But for now, they’re concentrating on the DBYO’s strings’ players (other instruments are coming) and the Camerata’s forthcoming gigs, one of which might be a DJ set featuring Vivaldi, at Soho House. “No one has ever done something like that in Hong Kong,” says Tim. “So again, we like trying new things, and not doing what you think classical music should.”