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Chan Hing-yan

Hong Kong musician

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ5070306
Source-derived summary

Hing-yan Chan is a composer and music educator. He is the James Chen & Yuen-Han Chan Endowed Professor in Music of University of Hong Kong. Chan received his D.M.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, majoring in composition and minoring in ethnomusicology.

Biography

Professor Chan Hing-Yan is Professor of Music at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He is arguably Hong Kong’s most representative and prolific composer in the classical music scene. His recent works include three chamber operas; the most recent being last year’s Ghost Love – a chamber opera after Xu Xu’s novella.

The two other operas, Heart of Coral – after the life of Xiao Hong (2013) and Datong – the Chinese Utopia (2015), were commissioned by the Hong Kong Arts Festival, and led to the Festival engaging Professor Chan for the extravaganza staged cantata Hong Kong Odyssey, for which he composed half the music. He was also its Music Director, mentoring three young composers and over 100 musicians. The programme was a highlight of the 2017 Festival to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the city’s handover.

Lauded for their subtle mediation between Chinese elements and Western idioms, Professor Chan’s compositions have been heard around the world at festivals such as Canberra International Music Festival (2017); Hong Kong Music Series in London (2017) and Hong Kong Week, Taipei (2014, 2016); the Second Spring of the Chinese Symphony, Beijing (2010); Edinburgh Festival (2009); Chinese Musicians Residency, Cornell (2009); and Hommage a Bartók, Budapest (2006).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Chan Hing-yan” is hong Kong musician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Chan, Hing-yan and Hong, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2013, 2015, 2017, 2014—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Chan, Hing-yan and Hong is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “hong Kong musician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5070306. VIAF identifies the subject as 51431541. The Library of Congress control number is no2005110460. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2014.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Chan Hing-yan”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Chan Hing-yan primary sources, Chan Hing-yan archive and Chan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Chan Hing-yan”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Chan Hing-yan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.