Yip Wai-hong, a towering figure in music education in Hong Kong since the 1960s and whose name is synonymous with the development of the city’s children’s choirs, has died at the age of 94.
Born in 1930 in mainland China, Yip moved with his parents to Hong Kong after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, but returned there to study music at Yenching University in Beijing and the Central Conservatory of Music in Tianjin, from where he graduated in music theory and composition in 1955.
Once in Hong Kong, Yip found work as one of the first teachers in the fledgling music school at Hong Kong Baptist College, which became a university in 1994 and where he taught for nearly three decades until his retirement in 1992.
Yip was a prolific composer throughout his life, penning more than 200 works, and received a Hall of Fame Award from the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong in 2017.
But it was his work as a pioneer of children’s music education that he will be best remembered by. In 1969, he founded the Hong Kong Children’s Choir (HKCC), a non-profit troupe dedicated to popularising early-age music training. It grew from an initial 39 members to 5,000 today, which makes it one of the world’s biggest choirs.
“If not for his early work and his lifetime of dedication to music education, Hong Kong would not see such a high level of choral singing among schoolchildren and young people today,” said Kelvin Lau Ho-hin, artistic director of the Hong Kong Inter-School Choral Festival. “I joined the HKCC when I was 12 and the experience was instrumental in my choice of career later on.”
Yip continued his own education, earning a master’s degree in church music from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the United States in 1970 and a doctorate in musical arts from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, in the US, in 1979.
News of his death on June 16 was announced the following day by the Yip’s Children’s Choral & Performing Arts Centre, an organisation Yip founded in 1983 and where his eldest daughter, Sincere Yip, is the music director.
“It is with great sorrow that we announce the death of our beloved Founder and Honorary Music Director, Dr Yip Wai Hong, who passed away peacefully at 23:00 on Father’s Day, June 16, 2024, at the age of 94,” it said on Facebook.
In a separate statement, the Hong Kong Children’s Choir paid tribute to “the Father of the Hong Kong Children’s Choir” and thanked Yip for his legacy and lifelong contribution to music.
Yip Wing-sie said: “Dr Yip left peacefully in his sleep last night after his three daughters visited him on Father’s Day. We’ll miss him dearly.”
Yip is survived by his wife and their three daughters.