Lora Chow
speaker
120 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Lora Chow’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
At that point, I think my options were pretty much like applying for a master's degree in singing in the US or come back to Hong Kong to work in this investment bank. And I chose the later because of my curiosity about how the financial markets work. And I guess there were also a lot of influences as I grew up in this financial hub.
I hear from my family discussing stocks in family gatherings and the financial news always talk about stocks on the TV. So I was curious about how all these things work. And I wanted to make money too, just to be realistic. I aspire to have a home with a grand piano where I can host concerts. So it seems like this is the path where I can achieve this dream.
And of course, even when I was working on the site, I continued to take singing lessons, I continued to perform in concerts, and I was pretty ambitious that I wanted to do both, having a great job while still doing things in music. So that's how I decided to come back to Hong Kong for the job.
Yeah, I think there were a series of events that built up to this transformation and big change in my career, and I wouldn't say there's one specific trigger. It's more like things just gradually build up until a point that I think everything works in my favor to switch out from finance into music.
Also, during my career in finance, there were times when I thought about maybe I should pursue a Master of Music, maybe I should just devote all my time in music, but then there were things that held me back. So it was like a struggle.
I remember even just a couple of years after graduation, I thought about joining an international singing competition, but I had a traumatic experience at that time that My vocal cord had a polyp and I couldn't sing. I couldn't even talk for an entire month. And I couldn't sing for an entire year. And I had to rest my voice to try different therapies and alternative medicine to recover my voice.
And the vocal cord is very fragile. Even after a year, when I started singing again, it's different from what I had from before. It takes time to build up the muscle again and also to fully recover from that. It actually took many years. So it held me back, but at the same time, because of this injury, I had an urge to compose. It was at that time that I started composing more.
Before that, I actually never had any formal training in composition, but I had good intuition to improvise and to write music. But at that time, I was seriously looking for opportunities to learn composing formally. And I signed up for this summer program in film scoring to learn from a Hollywood composer, Christopher Young, who scored Spider-Man and many other Hollywood movies.
It's a three-week program in Bulgaria. And I learned so much and I was so fulfilled during that time. I wrote pieces for orchestra. We recorded there. I found my real love, a real passion in music for composing. Ever since then, I came back to Hong Kong, of course, as a composer who is still very young and inexperienced.
It's hard to find opportunities, but I tried my best to write music for friends. And I started the Yale Alumni Chamber Music Society of Hong Kong. I wrote music for them for the inaugural concert, which was very well received. And because of that, I got an opportunity to write for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
But even with this kind of success, it's still like once a year I get to premiere a work and it's not sustainable. So I was still working in finance on the side. And it was during COVID when I had more time to write music. I was working remotely, all the concert venues were shut, and I had more time to think about my life.
And COVID kind of inspired me to think that life is short, time is very valuable. And there are so much I want to do that I couldn't at that time because concert venues were shut according to the government rules. But I had this strong desire to compose more music and I wrote a lot at home and I started to just upload it to my Instagram and even to YouTube.
And then I get feedback sometimes from strangers, sometimes from friends who are very supportive and motivated me to write more music. So after the pandemic, I got more opportunities to perform my music and to compose for different people. And even the chairman of my company really appreciated my music and sponsored a new work that I wrote for Hong Kong Phil. And I felt really honored.
And all these supportive voices from high profile people, from people I really respect, drove me to make this decision to devote more time in music. And at that time, there were a few projects that were looming on the side. I have been discussing with Mr. Eddie Tam about writing this fusion opera, combining Cantonese opera with Italian opera.
That's a really exciting idea to me, and I know I have to spend time to work on that. And also, I just co-founded Virtuoso Fiesta with my violinist friend, Ruda. And it started off pretty well. Actually, to my surprise, a lot of people were quite generous in sponsoring this new music organization.
And they connected us with people relevant to the field and to people who could support us in different aspects, from helping us to make a website to taking professional photography for our events. And all these came together to drive me to really focus more on my passion. And of course, on the side, also, the market has been pretty weak.
And it was a little bit upsetting to see that the markets are driven a lot by political decisions, just headlines. For example, whether the government is positive about reopening or zero COVID policy, like one policy changes so much in the market. And it became actually quite difficult to invest in stocks It became more irrational, I would say.
The stock price movements are less rational than before. And this is a bit discouraging to me to continue my analytical work in the financial markets. So balancing all these factors, it drove me to transform into a full-time musician from Hedge Fund Manager.
Yeah, yeah, that's very true. And I feel that I focus more on my heart because my mindset has changed. I focus more on like the spiritual growth actually over the last couple of years. And I realized that a lot of things, if we believe that it will happen, it will actually happen. And I guess starting Virtual Soul Fiesta in 2023, was like a dream came true for me and Ruta.
And we realized that dreams can come true. And there are a lot of supporting community that can help us realize our dreams. And that's why I think I should follow my heart.
Showing 41–60 of 120 · page 3 of 6
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