With the whole Festival team, I have great pleasure in presenting to you an outstanding 37th Hong Kong Arts Festival. I trust you will find many programmes of interest, and urge you to make your bookings early.

Some performances are in places where we seldom or have not ventured before – in the New Territories, for example, and in tall office buildings. Find out what is in store at these locations. It will be worth making your way there!

And of course, the 37th HKAF also takes us on journeys of the imagination – in the wonderful concerts to be performed by four of the world's leading orchestras: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Northern Sinfonia and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, each with its distinctive sound and unique identity. More great music comes from our recitalists, chamber musicians, world and jazz artists, and in a highly dramatic production of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk. In typically eclectic fashion, the 37th HKAF pays tribute to George Frideric Handel and Joseph Haydn in an important anniversary year, and marks 50 years of bossa nova!

Chinese theatre is of particular importance in the 37th HKAF. Traditional yue opera is performed by the Shanghai Yueju Opera Theatre. We are proud to present a constellation of Beijing Opera stars over three evenings. The National Ballet of China brings a new interpretation of The Peony Pavilion, and contemporary work is represented by Paper Tiger's Cool. Murder in San José, Black Swan and Book of Ghosts are Festival commissions; Hong Kong's young talents and Danny Yung, a generation apart, present their Festival premieres. There is also a wealth of English language theatre, unified by an examination of personal identity: George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, directed by Peter Hall, Vesturport's production of Franz Kafka Metamorphosis, and The Wooster Group's The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill.

All this, plus Alice's Wonderland and the enchanted island of Alcina; we look forward to your company on many journeys!

Tisa Ho
Executive Director