Professor Chan reflected on his research journey and expressed his sincere gratitude for the University’s support and recognition.

“I am deeply honoured to receive the 2025/26 Outstanding Research Impact Award. This recognition is a huge encouragement to our research team. Since joining the Department of Music at CUHK in 2016, I have dedicated over a decade to the composition and research of Cantonese contemporary music, exploring the dynamic relationship between speech tones and melody, and transforming the text-setting constraints of a tone language into creative resources. This work has given rise to open-access digital tools — including the Cantonese Melody Generator and the Cantonese Choral Database — which have together attracted over 380,000 queries from more than 36 countries and regions worldwide.

Yet what moves me the most is how this research has brought together Cantonese communities living far from home. For long, Cantonese-language choral music has been severely underrepresented on the international stage. Through the efforts of our team and peers in the industry, choirs dedicated to uniting Cantonese diaspora communities through choral music have since been founded in the United Kingdom and Canada. Conductors across Asia, Europe, and North America have attested that performing my compositions led their ensembles to venture into non-Western language repertoire for the very first time. To witness Cantonese speakers — at home and abroad — rediscover their mother tongue and cultural roots through song, and to see them build bridges of understanding with local non-Cantonese communities through music, is the part of this research I treasure most.”

The Faculty expresses its sincere appreciation to Professor Chan and his research team for advancing Cantonese contemporary music on the global stage. Through scholarship, creativity, and digital innovation, his work strengthens cultural connections worldwide and demonstrates the meaningful societal impact of humanities research.

Read more on Cantonese Contemporary Music Research: https://cantonesecomposition.com