Charles Kwong is a composer from Hong Kong whose practice approaches music as collective experiential situations - both within and beyond listening. His creative output spans orchestral music, collaborations with performers across diverse musical cultures, site-specific and transdisciplinary projects departing from the concert paradigm, and the exploration of performative possibilities in electronic sound synthesis.

 Rituals, fictionality, chaotic systems, nonhuman temporality, social ordering in performances, and intertextuality and hauntology arising from classical forms are some recurring core preoccupations that often shapes his creative process and agenda across different media.

Kwong’s music has been featured internationally at prestigious festivals such as Lucerne Forward, Ultraschall Berlin, Takefu International Music Festival, Ticino Musica, Festival International de Piano La Roque d’Anthéron, Marvão International Music Festival, and ManiFeste, among others. Recent commissioners include the Lucerne Festival, Takefu International Music Festival, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Ensemble Recherche, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (HKNME), Tai Kwun Contemporary, and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Other renowned groups and musicians who performed Kwong’s music include London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble of Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Offspring, Francesco Dillon, Mario Caroli, Jeanne-Marie Conquer, Tadashi Tajima, Tosiya Suzuki, Colleen Lee, Edward Gardner, Yip Wing-sie, Christoph Poppen, Pierre-André Valade, Sandro Gorli, among others.

Kwong has maintained a long-term collaboration with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta since 2014, which included a two-season appointment as the orchestra’s Artist Associate in 2020-2022, resulting in multiple commissions that have been showcased locally and as well globally in the orchestra’s overseas tours. Since 2015, he has also contributed to the orchestra's planning in contemporary repertoire and commissioning through his role in Contemporary Music Research. He was an invited composer at the Takefu International Music Festival in both 2018 and 2025, and undertook artist residencies at Initiative Freie Musikszene Zürich (2024), the Zurich University of the Arts Transdisciplinary Studies (2020), and Tai Kwun Contemporary (2020).​​

Recent highlights of Kwong’s artistic activities include a new orchestral commission from the Lucerne Festival in summer 2025 to commemorate the centenary of Pierre Boulez; Piano Concerto “Hereafters” (2023), written for Hong Kong Sinfonietta and pianist Colleen Lee; Made in Laterland (2023), a performative sound installation in collaboration with sound artist Ho Tsz Yeung at the Goethe-Institut Hong Kong; Elsewhere (2022), a site-specific composition for performances at the KKL Luzern Concert Hall with its world première being praised by Luzerner Zeitung for “enchanting the concert hall”; Lullabies (2022), an orchestral commission to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Hong Kong City Hall, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner; and Migrating Tracks (2021), written for ensemble recherche’s collaborative project The New Recherche on the theme of gentrification; In 2016, Ensemble intercontemporain performed Kwong’s sextet Lachrymae (2015) in their first-ever concert in Hong Kong in the ensemble’s history since 1976.

Kwong has conceived and led multiple large-scale site-specific and transdisciplinary productions in Hong Kong. He curated Our Audible City (2018–2019) for HKNME, composing Atlas, a cycle of six site-specific pieces written for non-concert venues. This artistic trajectory continued with Lifelike (2020), commissioned by HKNME for the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens, and Requiem (2021), commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary.

​​​As a performer, Kwong has made appearances in recent years at Kunstraum Walcheturm (2025), Festival Rümlingen (2024), WestK Freespace Noise Fest (2024), WestK Freespace Jazz Fest (2023), and WestK Sonic Encounter (2023, 2022).

Born in Hong Kong in 1985, Kwong studied music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and King’s College London, before earning his doctorate in Composition from the University of York in 2013 under the supervision of Thomas Simaku. His artistic development has also benefited significantly through the tutelages of Toshio Hosokawa, Isabel Mundry, Francesco Filidei, Mauro Lanza and Oscar Bianchi, among others.

 Kwong co-founded PROJECT21st with Sharon Chan in 2019, where he serves as co-director, masterminding multiple translocal and transdisciplinary artistic initiatives over the years. Since 2018, he has been an affiliated faculty member at the University of Hong Kong’s Music Department, where he currently teaches and mentors postgraduate modules in composition and sound art. Currently he splits his time between Zurich and Hong Kong.

www.charleskwong.com

Watch Charles Kwong’s Imaginary beings 2 for Tadashi Tajima and Tosiya Suzuki (2020), recorded at Ebila Hall, Tokyo in June 2022. The video is part of the Play Further! Video Series.