Media OutReach
Anoushka Shankar: Chapters – Hong Kong Premiere
City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong
Anoushka Shankar sitar/composer
Robert Ames guest conductor
“Storytelling, emotion and expression…..a spinetingling performance”
BROADWAYWORLD.COM
3 June 2026 (Wed)
Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall, 8:00pm
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 6 May 2026 – On 3 June 2026 at Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall, 8:00pm, City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong (CCOHK) presents the Hong Kong premiere of Anoushka Shankar – Chapters under the baton of Robert Ames. Carrying forward the legacy of her father, Ravi Shankar, the multi-Grammy-nominated sitar virtuoso and composer continues to champion bold new directions for Indian music in the classical world. Chapters, a joint commission between the BBC Proms, De Singel and City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong is derived from Anoushka Shankar’s trilogy of albums entitled “Forever, For Now”, “How Dark It Is Before Dawn” and “We Return to Light” and maps her personal, artistic and geographical journeys. In July 2025, Chapters culminated in a sonically transformative orchestral programme for sitar and orchestra with a premiere at the BBC Proms by Anoushka Shankar and the London Contemporary Orchestra under the baton of Robert Ames. In collaboration with arranger Robert Ames, the work successfully combines Shankar’s signature blend of classical Indian sitar with the evocative colours of a modern orchestra.
A seven-time Grammy nominee, Anoushka Shankar is widely recognized as “a visionary artist who redefines the boundaries of the sitar for the 21st century.” Inspired by her father, the legendary Ravi Shankar, her compositions blend the intricacies of Indian classical music with western orchestral traditions. In addition to her acclaimed solo albums and collaborative projects, Anoushka Shankar has composed extensively for film, dance and orchestral ensembles, forging a path that bridges tradition and innovation.
Tickets for Anoushka Shankar – Chapters are available from all URBTIX outlets and are priced at $600, $480, $350 and $220 with 50% off for full-time students, senior citizens, Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) recipients, people with disabilities and their accompanying minder. For ticketing enquiries and customer service call 3166 1100; for telephone bookings call 3166 1288; for internet bookings visit www.urbtix.hk; for programme enquiries call 2864 2156 or email [email protected].
Anoushka Shankar sitar/composer
Grammy-nominated musician and composer, Anoushka Shankar is a masterful sitarist and a prolific recording artist with a ground-breaking international career. She had trod new paths in a wide range of musical genres including world, classical, electronic and jazz music. At the age of eighteen she was the youngest and first female recipient of a British House of Commons Shield, the first Indian woman to receive eleven nominations, perform and serve as a presenter at the Grammy® Awards and the first Indian woman to receive an Ivor Novello Awards nomination for film composition for her soundtrack to A Suitable Boy. She is also an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, one of the first five female composers to be featured in the UK’s A-level music syllabus and the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate in Music from the University of Oxford. From the age of nine, she studied the sitar and Indian classical music with her father, Pandit Ravi Shankar, learning by ear not only ancient musical traditions passed on through generations but also the spirit of improvisation for which her father was so renowned. Her love for musical connections across borders has led to numerous collaborations with a diverse range of international artists including Herbie Hancock, her half-sister Norah Jones, Patti Smith, Sting, Jacob Collier, Joshua Bell, Arooj Aftab, Nils Frahm, M.I.A, Rodrigo y Gabriela and His Holiness The Dalai Lama. She has also appeared as a soloist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Metropole Orkest, London Contemporary Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Her touring career has taken her to venerable concert halls, legendary jazz cafes and major festival stages to audiences of 40,000 people. Anoushka Shankar is currently the creative director of the Brighton Festival. In 2025 she marked her 30 years of stage performances with the release of We return to Light, the third chapter of her trilogy of mini albums. In the same year she performed at the BBC Proms with the London Contemporary Orchestra.
Robert Ames guest conductor
Robert Ames is a conductor, composer, curator and the co-founder of the London Contemporary Orchestra. Over the past 15 years, he has pioneered a genre-fluid approach to collaboration, blurring the lines between electronic production and the classical tradition in a diverse and exciting career. His musical collaborations include Radiohead, Little Simz and The National, Taylor Swift, Frank Ocean, Self Esteem, Anoushka Shankar, Philip Glass, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Mica Levi, Jonny Greenwood and Steve Reich. He has recorded two solo albums and has had extensive soundtrack experience from indie films to mainstream Oscar winners. Robert Ames’ guest conducting engagements include the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Metropole Orkest, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has made appearances at the BBC Proms, the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Centre, The Concertgebouw and the Sydney Opera House.
Hashtag: #CCOHK #AnoushkaShankar
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City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong
City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong (CCOHK) holds a unique position as one of Asia’s leading chamber orchestras. Founded by oboist Leanne Nicholls in 1999, CCOHK has performed with many of the world’s most celebrated artists and composers including Sir James Galway, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Dame Emma Kirkby, Sir Thomas Allen, Sir Neville Marriner, Michala Petri, Christian Lindberg, Sarah Chang, Julian Lloyd Webber, Barry Douglas, Edgar Meyer, Branford Marsalis, Sir Karl Jenkins, Ney Rosauro, Richard Galliano and Alma Deutscher. The orchestra has also collaborated with celebrities including Dame Edna Everage, Hayley Westenra, Richard Clayderman, Robin Gibb and Canto-pop stars Sandy Lam, Hacken Lee, Hins Cheung, Ivana Wong and Jacky Cheung. Additional highlights include concerts with the Vienna Boys’ Choir, the Warsaw Boys’ Choir, The American Boychoir, the Swedish Voices Chamber Choir, the King’s Singers and The Swingle Singers. CCOHK’s progressive programming has been internationally recognized with tour invitations to festivals in London, L’Aquila, Taipei, Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai. At home CCOHK has performed for French May Arts Festival, Hong Kong Ballet, RTHK’s televised Christmas Concerts in the Park, the 2017 World Harp Congress, The Hong Kong Composers’ Guild and The Hong Kong International Piano Competition. Cinema and anime performances include Howard Blake’s The Snowman & The Bear, the Harry Potter series, Final Fantasy, Attack on Titan and One Piece Music Symphony. CCOHK is also a keen supporter of contemporary music and has commissioned works by Mao Yuan, Samson Young, Joyce Tang, Dobrinka Tabakova and Richard Harvey. The orchestra’s CDs include world premiere recordings on the NAXOS, Orchid Classics and OUR Recordings labels with Michala Petri, Dame Evelyn Glennie and bandoneón/piano duo Binelli-Ferman. CCOHK’s passion for building young audiences for music has inspired the creation of several award-winning productions and musicals. Credits include Magnificent Mozart, The Star Bach, The Bonn Man, Haydn & The Prince, Bug Symphony (winner of the Public Choice Award at the YAMawards in Portugal 2017), WILD (The Musical) (winner of the Public Choice Award at the YAMawards in Belgium 2022) and Shark Symphony. In 2023 CCOHK garnered five-star reviews for the London premiere of WILD (The Musical), and in the same year was voted into RTHK Radio 4’s Top Ten Music Headlines. Armenian French piano virtuoso Vahan Mardirossian serves as chief conductor (since 2019), succeeding French conductor Jean Thorel (2008 to 2016). CCOHK is currently a Venue Partner of Tsuen Wan Town Hall (since 2026) and the recipient of HKADC’s Eminent Arts Group Scheme (since 2024).
Asia’s first Design & Innovation Festival announces its venue and key speakers — where Japanese design expertise meets the cultural diversity of Asia
| Name | SYNC Design & Innovation in SITE 2026 |
| Date | Friday, June 26, 2026 |
| Venue | Paragon Hall, 5th Floor, Siam Paragon, Bangkok, Thailand |
| Admission | Free (advance registration required) |
| Languages | Thai / English / Japanese |
| Website | https://syncforum.asia |
| Organizer | Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. |
| Production & Co-organizers | FOURDIGIT Inc., National Innovation Agency (NIA), Thailand |
| Supported by | Creative Economy Agency (CEA) |
| Production partners | Y’s Connection Inc., J-WAVE, Inc., iDID |
Hashtag: #FOURDIGIT
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Code4Mzansi highlights the growing strength of South Africa’s developer ecosystem and the role of youth-led innovation in shaping the country’s digital future
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Media OutReach Newswire – 26 May 2026 – South Africa’s emerging developers are building close to the ground, with many of the strongest solutions at the inaugural Huawei Code4Mzansi finals focused on systems people use every day: township retail, healthcare, energy, agriculture, payments and the creative economy.
The competition was held in partnership with the Department of Small Business Development. “The Code4Mzansi competition is not just a celebration of achievement, it is a launchpad for the future,” said Minister Stella Ndabeni, whose department co-hosted the event and delivered the closing address.
The finals revealed a clear shift from building abstract digital products to practical tools that help small businesses trade better, communities access services more easily, and local industries solve problems faster.
Four finalist teams focused directly on the township economy, with solutions covering food safety verification for spaza shops, offline point-of-sale systems built for load-shedding, WhatsApp-native marketplaces for informal retailers, and community credit systems for SASSA grant recipients.
Others addressed AI-driven healthcare access, electricity theft detection, smart agriculture, financial infrastructure for the creator economy, and AI-generated African music.
Held at Huawei Office Park in Woodmead, the finals brought together more than 100 attendees, including government representatives, academic partners, industry leaders and media.
“The quality of the finalist solutions demonstrated the potential of local innovation to respond to real market needs,” said Steven Chen, Cloud CEO of Huawei Technologies South Africa.
Academic partners included the University of Pretoria, the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town.
“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and technology is their greatest accelerator. The participants here today are future entrepreneurs who will drive South Africa’s digital economy forward,” said Professor Thokozani Shongwe, Vice Dean of Postgraduate Studies, Research and Internationalisation at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment.
Industry partner rain also attended. Leon Nortje, Principal and Senior Architect at rain, said the competition offered a strong view of the country’s emerging technology pipeline.
“It is always good to see new projects and new teams working on solutions that are valuable and industry-related. We will be looking out for potential new employees,” said Nortje.
The winners
The finalists competed for a prize pool of R800,000. MAAT by SIMVAK was named the overall grand winner and received the Business Value Award, taking home R300,000. The platform addresses food safety and regulatory compliance in South Africa’s informal retail sector through AI agents, real-time product recall alerts, and counterfeit detection for the spaza shop ecosystem.
“The spaza network is the supply chain for most South African households,” said SIMVAK founder Shingirayi Mandebvu.
HealthHive by FTCK received second prize in the Business Value Award category, taking home R200,000, for its AI telemedicine platform that matches patients with the right medical practitioners based on their symptoms.
Auraa received the Grand Innovation Award for its AI music engine built to generate authentic African sound. The platform has been associated with an album that has crossed one million streams.
The Future Star Award went to e-Khadi, a community credit and stokvel platform giving SASSA grant recipients access to essentials at their local spaza shops, supported by AI-assisted credit scoring and fraud detection.
The People’s Choice Award, voted by the public on Huawei’s social media channels, went to DevRift, a semi-finalist in the competition, who took home R100,000.
Minister Ndabeni delivered the closing address, positioning Code4Mzansi within the government’s agenda for youth entrepreneurship, small business development and digital inclusion.
“Our task is to ensure that innovation does not remain a moment of applause, but becomes a pathway to enterprise creation, digital inclusion, and sustainable growth,” she said.
“Thank you to Huawei for being a perfect partner on the journey that we are travelling, and of course, those that matter most, the developers who dared to compete,” she said.
Code4Mzansi forms part of the global Huawei Cloud Developer Competition. In its inaugural edition, South Africa attracted more participants than any other country: 1,041 across 353 teams, including 176 enterprise teams, resulting in the highest enterprise participation rate among all competing markets. Twenty semi-finalists were selected before the top nine advanced to the final.
For the finalists, the work is just beginning. As Minister Ndabeni said, “Go home today proud. But tomorrow, wake up, build again.”
Hashtag: #Huawei #Code4Mzansi #SouthAfrica
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About Huawei
Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With 213,000 employees operating in over 170 countries, we serve more than three billion people worldwide.
Huawei is committed to bringing digital to every person, home, and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world. In 2025, Huawei generated CNY880.9 billion in revenue, reinvesting 21.8% (CNY192.3 billion) into R&D, with about 53.7% of its employees working in R&D. As a private company fully owned by its employees, Huawei focuses on customer-centric innovation and open collaboration to create lasting value and drive technological breakthroughs globally.
For more information, please visit Huawei online at www.huawei.com or follow us on:
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Congratulating Dr Lai on her achievement, John Lee, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), said that the HKSAR can “transform from a ‘supporter’ of the country’s great aerospace endeavours into an ‘executor’ “.
“This not only demonstrates the HKSAR’s capability in contributing to the country’s development into an aerospace power, but also showcases how Hong Kong could better integrate into and serve the overall national development,” Mr Lee said.
“This mission is of great significance, as it is not only the first manned spaceflight mission during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, but also the first time for a payload expert from the HKSAR to participate in it.”
The Shenzhou-23 crew will conduct on-orbit rotation with the Shenzhou-21 crew. The crew, including Dr Lai, will stay in the space station and conduct multiple experiments and applications in various fields such as scientific applications.
The Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry of the HKSAR Government, Professor Sun Dong, led a delegation to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to witness this historic moment. Members of the delegation included other government representatives, I&T experts, youths and students.
“I truly believe this is a great demonstration of Hong Kong integrating into and serving the overall national development through concrete actions, while contributing our strength in I&T,” Professor Sun said.
” ‘Science and technology is primary productive force, talent is primary resource, and innovation is primary driver of growth.’ The HKSAR Government will continue to drive the development of I&T, accelerate the establishment of an international I&T centre, and make greater contributions to building our nation into a strong power in science, technology, and aerospace.”
Commissioner for Innovation and Technology of the HKSAR Government, Mr Ivan Lee, said that the Government had been providing funding support for universities and research institutions in conducting aerospace technology-related projects through the Innovation and Technology Fund.
“In 2024, we launched a special call for funding applications, inviting universities to submit project proposals related to aerospace technology. Following a selection process, we supported six projects. Among them was the Multi‑Spectral Imaging Carbon Observatory (MUSICO) developed by a team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,” he said.
On the Tiangong Space Station, Dr Lai will conduct experiments including operating the MUSICO — the world’s first lightweight, high-resolution synergistic observatory for carbon dioxide and methane emission point sources.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Dr Lai is a Superintendent of the Hong Kong Police Force. In the recruitment exercise of China’s fourth batch of preparatory astronauts launched in 2022, she was successfully selected as a payload expert and was deployed to the China Astronaut Research and Training Center for training.
Before embarking on the historic spaceflight, Dr Lai expressed hope that it would inspire more Hong Kong youths to devote themselves to the field of I&T, thereby contributing to the country’s scientific and technological self-reliance and strength.
Hashtag: #HongKong #BrandHongKong #I&T #aerospace #technology
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