Pak Hei (Alvin) Leung was born and raised in Hong Kong. His compositions have been featured in VIPA Festival 2023, June in Buffalo 2023, CMS Great Lakes Conference, SPLICE Institute, EMM, ICMC, SCI National Conference, NSEME, Hong Kong Contemporary Music Festival, SCI Summer Student Mixtape, Charlotte New Music Festival and others.

Alvin is currently a PhD student in Music Composition at the University of North Texas. He received a Master of Music degree at Bowling Green State University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). His principal teachers include Joseph Klein, Kirsten Soriano, Panayiotis Kokoras, Marilyn Shrude, Christopher Dietz, Mikel Kuehn and Wendy Wan-ki Lee.

About the piece

Awakening, or Dreaming, as Chuang Tzu, or a Butterfly, for piano

One day Chuang Tzu (an ancient Chinese philosopher) dreamed that he was a butterfly. He was flying enjoyably and was quite sure that he was a butterfly. He then awoke and realized he was Chuang Tzu instead. But then he asked: was he Chuang Tzu who dreamed as a butterfly, or a butterfly who was dreaming as Chuang Tzu?