The saxophone music of Austin Yip

Austin Ho Kwan Yip (b. 1985) is one of the most popular and prolific young composers of his generation in Hong Kong. His music brings to the field not only artistic qualities but also historical and cultural values as he often draws inspiration from his hometown. Throughout his career, Yip explores the idea of Hong Kong culture by drawing upon significant cultures in Hong Kong and composing music that is inspired by and related to the city. As a result, Yip successfully auralizes the inspirations and conveys to the audience his impression on Hong Kong by integrating relevant musical styles, musical depictions, and sound samples with his distinctive compositional languages. Despite the distinct historical and cultural qualities in his music, only one of Yip’s compositions has been recorded and published commercially. Also, there is only one extensive analysis on one of his pieces. This lack of attention is unfortunate for a composer with Yip’s uniqueness. The goal of this project is to bring musicians’, especially saxophonists’ attention to the excellence in Yip’s music and create more opportunities for future collaborations between saxophonists and Hong Kong composers. The purpose of this project is to create a resource about Yip’s saxophone music. The selected works demonstrate the characteristics of Yip’s compositional language and inspirations that pay homage to Hong Kong and literature. This document sketches Yip’s biographical background and discusses the research and recording process for this project.