Hong Kong
香港
http://www.elaineliu.com
Elaine Liu describes herself as a “photographer by day, a jazz singer at night.” Music and the visual arts to Elaine are related, but different expressions of the same creative impulse – a love of nature, a fascination with light and shade, and a faith that beauty can be found and revealed at any time and in any place. That artistic urge provides the impetus for the multi-talented Hong Kong-born singer’s involvement in both fields.
Elaine is Hong Kong’s premier and most in-demand jazz vocalist. Her smoky, alluring voice can be heard regularly on radio and television, Hong Kong’s top jazz venues, as well as the territory’s leading concert halls and cultural centers. Elaine works with the territory’s best musicians and is well known for her performances as vocalist for Hong Kong’s renowned Japanese big band, the Saturday Night Jazz Orchestra. She has also played Rome’s famous Jazz venues as well as touring in China and represented Hong Kong in both Singapore and Taiwan Jazz Festival.
In the words of the South China Morning Post’s reviewer: “[Elaine Liu] produces interpretations poised delicately between the bitter-sweet melancholy of Billy Holiday and the subtle sexiness of Eartha Kitt.”
Elaine was educated in England and the United States. After completing her Master of Fine Arts degree at Boston University, she returned to Hong Kong to pursue a career in photography and graphic design, setting up Elaine Liu Productions Limited. Her experiences in Boston and elsewhere in North America during her studies were formative, nurturing her interest and talent in a variety of creative areas including painting, photography and music.
She is accomplished in the graphic arts as well as jazz, specializing in black and white portraits and landscapes. She has had a solo exhibition, Green in Black and White, as a featured artist of the year in the Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s Contemporary Art Project. A joint exhibition alongside Helmut Newton and 11 Asian-based photographers was held in 2000, including Osbert Lam and internationally recognized cinematographer Christopher Doyle. In 2002 she had another join exhibition of Hong Kong’s top ten photographers for Tony & Guy. Her current preoccupation as an image maker is reflected in a unique series of black and white studies of the leading lights of Hong Kong’s jazz scene naming Slightly out Of Tune. Each of her subjects is cast in a new and often surprising light, and these arresting and highly personal images present intriguing new facets to the men and woman behind the music. Currently, Liu is celebrating her first album titled “Stay In My Heart”. A self produced project collaborated with Hong Kong’s best known arranger, pianist and composer Ted Lo as well as other outstanding musicians from the US, including Vinnie Colaiuta, Neil Stubenhaus, Bob Shepphard, and Steve Staunton.
Elaine Liu is that rare artist who is supremely talented across a range of creative interests. But her deepest love is reserved for her fast-developing career as an Asian jazz singer, who has found her own voice and brings the sensibilities of both east and west to bear in an entirely original way.廖綺玲在英國念中學時已對藝術產生濃厚興趣，中學畢業後到美國波士頓大學修讀藝術學位課程，並以藝術歷 史作為副修科目，１９９２年於波士頓大學取得碩士學位，主修平面設計。波士頓是一個充滿音樂與藝術細胞的城市，廖綺玲被她深深吸引着，也對她留下了難忘的印象。
在美國完成６年的藝術與設計課程，廖綺玲決定回港發展，她開始投入一連串的攝影及平面設計工作，１９９９年她成立了自己的制作公司。需然創作已成為她的職業，但她仍然享受箇中的樂趣。除了視覺藝術外，廖綺玲亦是音樂愛好者，她日間是攝影師、是設計師，晩上便會搖身變為一個爵士樂歌手，她曾於本港及世界各地多個爵士樂會演出。廖綺玲認為攝影與音樂也是人與人之間溝通和表達自己的重要元素。