Last year was celebrated as the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Impressionist movement. To mark the occasion, a selection of masterpieces from the Musee de l’Orangerie and the Musee d’Orsay tracing the life and work of Paul Cezanne and Auguste Renoir have been brought together for a touring exhibition. It’s currently on show in Hong Kong.

Aftertime” at White Cube Gallery is London-based painter Michele Fletcher’s first Hong Kong exhibition. In her works, vivid and layered ribbon-like swirls of paint instantly bring to mind lush vegetation. Fletcher completes each painting in a single session, often requiring considerable physical endurance, sometimes over as long as twelve hours, applying layers of paint on top of previous still wet layers. Texture and depth are created by the scraping, dragging and dripping of the paint across the surface.

Pianist Chiyan Wong’s musical repertoire ranges from the early Baroque to the 21st century. For his debut album, “Liszt Transfigured”, he edited and performed Franz Liszt's extremely challenging transcriptions of well-known opera melodies. His second album focused on Ferruccio Busoni’s edited and abridged 1914 version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. His latest album, and his first digital album “Swing!”, in collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra, features a selection of jazz-influenced music by Alexander Tsfasman and Maurice Ravel. Chiyan’s with us right now to tell us more.

Kung Hey Fat Choy! We’re all hoping the new year will bring an abundance of good things, and in today’s show we have an abundance of music, and a little comedy, to celebrate the Year of the Snake. Dizi player Jessica Fung previously appeared on The Works with her Chinese ensemble TroVessional, but she’s venturing onto new ground with a new lineup this year. A little later she’ll be joining us to tell us more. But first, we get things off to a glorious start. And “Glorious!” is the name of a new adaptation of the West End play that Leanne Nicholls of the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong is presenting during this festival season.

Later on the show, we’ll be getting into the swing of things with some old friends. Bassist Sylvain Gagnon, guitarist Antoine Richard and drummer Tobe Kushiator will be here to tell us about a new album that focuses on “jazz manouche” a genre popularised by the Romani jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and a group of fellow musicians in Paris from the 1930s to the 1950s. In jazz manouche, the guitarist uses a form of strumming known as “the pump” to add a swinging percussion. In music in general, percussion can be provided by a range of hitting, crashing, shaking, and scraping movements. For many, it remains the simplest and most accessible form of music-making.

Ruth Asawa once said that her primary concerns in life were art and art education: “I have devoted most of my life to the study and practice of art. I have made doing it part of my life…. Doing is living.” “Doing Is Living”, at the David Zwirner gallery until February 22nd, is her first solo exhibition in Greater China. It includes several of the abstract multi-lobed looped-wire sculptures for which she’s best known, as well as works on paper.

The qin or guqin is an ancient Chinese plucked seven-string musical instrument, so valued in traditional cultural circles that an old saying goes: “A gentleman does not part with his qin or with poetry without good reason”. Well, later in the show, we may not be parting with a qin, but we will be sharing with you some new music for it as composed by a group of contemporary musicians. Stay with us for that. But first, last year was Hong Kong’s hottest since records began 140 years ago. Rising temperatures and extreme weather caused by climate change are worldwide phenomena, and their effects can be seen in the drought and fierce winds that sparked the recent devastating Los Angeles wildfires. Here in Hong Kong, concerns about the impact of climate change are at the forefront of an ongoing exhibition by a group of local artists.

Currently on show at the University of Hong Kong’s Museum and Art Gallery is an exhibition of works by art historian and visual artist David Clarke. “David Clarke - Colour in Space” features ten giclée prints of his own abstract watercolour paintings, an original watercolour, and a 14-minute video work.

Since cave dwellers first left handprints on cave walls, artists have found ways to represent themselves in art. Since then, self-portraits have appeared in many different forms: in painting, sculpture, photography and other creative media. Currently on show at M+ is an exhibition of works by two prominent photographers for whom self-portraiture becomes a way to reflect on society, celebrity, and identity.

There is a theory that almost all the elements required to make up the human body were created in the furnaces of stars. That theory inspires the title of “The Children of Dust” at Mayao Art Space in Wong Chuk Hang. The exhibition features 31 works by eight artists from China, Israel, Peru, Iran, France, and Singapore.

Singer-songwriter Claudia Ng says her compositions are driven by her love for jazz. Her latest EP is called, “Everything, everywhere”, the Chinese title of which《空空》(kung kung) is inspired by a concept from Buddhist philosophy.

Happy New Year.

Later in this week’s show we’re kicking off the new year by “tripping the light fantastic”. In other words, we’re celebrating the new year with dance, specifically tango and tango music. Nazar Tabachyshyn, accordion player and founder of the local band, Café 852, will be here with pianist Melodie Wong and two dancers. Don’t go away. First though, a trip to the circus, where circus highlights, especially in modern times and now that performing animals have fallen out of favour, can include acrobatics, aerial numbers, juggling, clowning, magic and even theatre. Here in Hong Kong, Tai Kwun has organised a contemporary circus festival during the holiday season since 2018. We went to take a look at their training programme.

Currently showing at Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong is Mark Bradford’s “Exotica”. Bradford is known for his large-scale abstract paintings using paper and graphic materials he has collected. Through video, print, collages, drawing, mixed media and installations, he explores social and political issues within marginalised and vulnerable communities.

Merry Christmas!

We have some goodies for everyone this festive season. In this week’s show we’re welcoming some friends back to talk about a very special project. The Lincoln Center in New York City is home to eleven performing arts organisations. It’s one of the world’s leading performing arts centres, and offers a variety of programming that includes music, dance, opera, theatre, cinema and more. One of the buildings among the complex is the Jazz at Lincoln Center. Two years ago, Hong Kong guitarist Eugene Pao, pianist Ted Lo, drummer Antony Fernandes and bassist, Sylvain Gagnon went there to perform, an event that resulted in a new CD. And they are here to tell us all about it.

Later in the show, we are featuring some dance tunes. And the person spinning those tunes is French DJ and producer, Romain FX. He’ll be here to tell us why he considers Hong Kong’s disco scene in the 1970s and 1980s to represent the epitome of desire. But first, while Hong Kong’s disco beats and Cantopop sounds may have attracted Romain, for one of his fellow French expatriates here, architect Daphné Mandel, it’s the city’s quieter side and more distant past that has encouraged her to stay and create.

As part of its 25th anniversary celebrations the Karin Weber Gallery is featuring a group exhibition by local artists called "Palatable Parables". It’s focusing on how different aspects of culinary tradition can influence art and shape cultural narratives and identities.

Over the centuries there have been many different artistic schools, styles, and movements in traditional Japanese painting. By the 19th century the art form revealed the influence and synthesis of native Japanese aesthetics and ideas imported from Chinese and Western art. Pushing the synthesis further, in his different styles contemporary artist Hisashi Tenmyouya says that he wants not only to revive Japanese traditional painting as contemporary art but also to rebel against the authoritative art system.

The aim of the Osage Art Foundation’s "South by Southeast" project, initiated in 2015, is to develop and advance perspectives on Southeast Asian art. This exhibition, "Stemflow: South by Southeast" is the third edition. Curated by Patrick Flores and Reuben Keehan, this third edition brings together 19 artists from Asia and the South Pacific to examine not only the interconnectivity but also the cultural subjectivities of the two regions.

The third edition of Tai Kwun’s Prison Yard Festival is back this month with a programme that highlights both local and international musicians. One group of musicians featured is the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The string ensemble is showcasing music that fuses Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” with original compositions by Egyptian-born, Sydney-based oud player and composer Joseph Tawadros. He's with us in the studio now, along with several of the orchestra members.

It’s the third edition and the final year of the three-year Sai Kung Hoi Arts Festival, organised by the Tourism Commission, supported by the Hong Kong Geopark and curated by a cross-disciplinary design team. We featured the festival’s first year in 2022. This year, the organisers say the aim is to focus on interactions and encounters.

Kurosaki Akira and Nakabayashi Tadayoshi, both born in 1937, are leading figures in post-war Japanese printmaking. The University Museum and Art Gallery in the University of Hong Kong is currently presenting an exhibition of around 650 of their works that highlights not only their differences but also how their approaches gradually converged.

The world is a stage for Hong Kong-born conductor Elim Chan. At 38, she has already made her debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the 2023 BBC Proms, and this year she opened the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s classical summer season at the Hollywood Bowl. She’s just ended a five-year stint as Principal Conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, and before that spent five years with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra as principal guest conductor. She’s conducted orchestras in Amsterdam, Oslo, Finland, Berlin, Paris, Cleveland, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, and is currently making her debut in Australia with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. On the way to Australia, she returned to Hong Kong at the end of November to conduct a few concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. We managed to catch up with her.