Director, Charivari Agreable
Born in Malaysia of Cantonese-Hakka descent, Kah-Ming Ng studied at Monash University, Melbourne (where he obtained a B.E. in civil engineering), the Frankfurt State Academy of Music (as a DAAD scholar), the London Guildhall School of Music & Drama (on a Foreign & Commonwealth Office scholarship), and St Anne’s College, Oxford University (as a British Council Chevening research scholar), from which he gained his performance M.Phil. degree. He was awarded a D.Phil. by Keble College, Oxford University, for his doctoral research into figured bass accompaniment in its social and artistic context. His harpsichord teachers included Elizabeth Anderson (Melbourne), Harald Hoeren (Cologne), Michael Behringer (Freiburg) and Christopher Kite (London).
He is a winner of the Guildhall School’s Early Music Competition and a Fellow (in Harpsichord) of the Trinity College of Music London. He has accompanied the recitals and concerts of pioneering artists of the historically-informed movement, including Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Catherine Bott, John Holloway, and Simon Standage. Kah-Ming has contributed reviews and articles to leading specialist music journals; he wrote the entries on English and French baroque ornamentation in the revised New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians. In between his performing and directing, he squeezes in some adjudicating (of competitions and examinations) and lecturing, including a short spell as Course Co-ordinator & Lecturer in Early Music Studies at the Faculty of Music, Oxford University.
As the director of the award-winning Charivari Agreable and its work with over sixty choirs in the UK, Kah-Ming was invited in 2008 to address the annual convention of the Association of British Choral Directors, his co-presenters being some of the biggest names in the choral scene, such as Sir David Wilcocks, John Rutter, Bob Chilcott, Nicholas Cleobury, Andrew Parrott, and Eric Whitacre.