Music Director & Conductor: Apollo Wong
Assistant Conductor: Jason Liu
Pianist: Alexander Wong
The Learners Chorus was founded in 1979 by former members of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union Choir, and is today one of Hong Kong’s leading independent choirs, presenting large-scale choral repertoire with its orchestral partner, The Learners Orchestra, under Music Director Apollo Wong. Throughout its history the Chorus has commissioned new works from Hong Kong composers, helping to expand the local choral repertoire, with commissions from Chan Hing-yan, Victor Chan, Daniel Law, Law Wing-fai and, most recently, Jason Liu, among others.
Alongside the standard repertoire, the Chorus has often brought unfamiliar choral music to Hong Kong audiences, giving the Asian premiere of Uģis Prauliņš’s Missa Rigensis and performing Arvo Pärt’s Credo. Recent seasons have included Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bach’s Mass in B minor and Handel’s Messiah, and in 2025 Mahler’s Second Symphony with the University Choir and University Philharmonic Orchestra of the University of Hong Kong, renewing a connection with the University reaching back to the Chorus’s founding.
The Chorus has appeared as a guest with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Chorus, in the Handel/Mozart Messias and Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, and with the Macao Orchestra in Bach’s Easter Oratorio and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Further afield, Learners made its North American debut in 2019 at the Los Angeles International Choir Festival, performing Verdi’s Requiem at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels with the Dream Orchestra of Los Angeles, and closed the Shenzhen Belt & Road International Music Festival with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra the same year. Earlier engagements include Mahler’s Eighth Symphony at the Hong Kong-Vienna Music Festival and a London debut at St John’s Smith Square.
Learners is committed to bringing on young musicians: students sing and play alongside its members, young choir members have taken the podium in its concerts, and since 2006 its Student Ticket Sponsorship Programme has brought over 9,000 students to its concerts. Net ticket proceeds from the concerts it presents are donated to charity, supporting clean water, school-building and education projects in the region.
The Chorus returns to the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in November, joining the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Chorus and the London Philharmonic Choir for Mahler’s Eighth Symphony.