Bio

Kevin Lau is active as a composer of contemporary classical music. His first complete composition, Empire of Paradise (1999), was arranged and performed by the Albertan drum corps Allegiance Elite throughout Canada and the United States. Since then, he has had music commissioned and performed by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra, the University of Calgary Brass Choir, the Canadian Composers' Quartet, the Esprit Orchestra, the Georgian Bay Symphony, the Cecilia String Quartet, the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Toronto Philharmonia, the Onnanoko Drumming Ensemble, and the Via Salzburg Chamber Ensemble. His music has been read and recorded by renowned artists such as Scott St. John and Lara Downes, as well as eminent ensembles such as Eighth Blackbird, the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. His orchestral composition Fountain of Dreams was selected as the winner of both the 2005 Mississauga Young Composers' Competition and the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra Composer's Competition in 2008/09.

Kevin is also active in many other areas of composition. In 2006 he wrote the score to the theatre musical Box Office, which was staged seven times at the Tarragon Theatre as part of the 2006 Toronto Fringe Festival. In 2007 he composed the score for a professional video game for Groove Games based on the movie 300. He has written music for over a dozen films, including the feature documentary UFOs: A Secret History, which aired on the History Channel in 2008. Recently, he co-wrote the full-length orchestral score (with Canadian composer Ronald Royer) to Gooby, a Canadian children's feature film starring Eugene Levy and Robbie Coltrane.

In addition to his compositional ventures, Kevin is an accomplished pianist and arranger. He has performed in a variety of series and venues, including the Toronto Arts and Letters Club, Heliconian Hall, the Liberty Village New Artist Series, and the Mondavi Center in UC Davis, California. His two orchestral arrangements of Christmas Carols ("Jingle Bells" and "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear") are performed frequently by the Mississauga and Scarborough community orchestras. He has collaborated with several non-classical ensembles on live orchestral arrangements, including the Celtic group Rant Maggie Rant and the rock band Code Blue. In 2009 he debuted as a guest conductor for the Mississauga Symphony on his own composition, Sea of Blossoms. Most recently, he was commissioned by the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles to arrange the percussion concerto Tongues of Fire (by esteemed composer Christos Hatzis) for wind ensemble and percussion.

In 2007 Kevin co-founded the Sneak Peek Orchestra with conductor Victor Cheng. Composed primarily of student musicians and emerging professionals from the University of Toronto, the orchestra has premiered four of his works, including his Violin Concerto (with soloist Alexa Wilks) and, most recently, The Water of Life, which was performed at the George Weston Recital Hall (with violinist Conrad Chow) as part of the international charity Free the Children. Kevin lives in Toronto and is currently pursuing his doctorate degree in music composition at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Christos Hatzis. He will be composer-in-residence for the Mississauga Symphony Orchestra for 2010/2011.