Ellen Joyce Loo Hoi Tung (; 27 March 1986 – 5 August 2018) was a
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
-
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
musician, singer-songwriter and record producer. She was the guitarist, backing vocalist and a co-founder of the folk-pop
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
group
at17
at17, consisting of Eman Lam and Ellen Joyce Loo, were a Hong Kong–based folktronica and Cantopop all-female band managed by People Mountain People Sea.
Biography
Loo and Lam first met each other at a singing competition held by Tom Lee ...
.
Early life
Loo was born in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
, Canada, on March 27, 1986. At age 4, she moved to Hong Kong. She learned
classical guitar
The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...
from her father at the age of nine. At age 14, she and her older brother, P. J. Loo, entered the musical competition "Original Music 2000" (原音2000), which was held by
Tom Lee Music in Hong Kong. They won third prize in the competition.
Personal life
Loo was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2013, and made her first public statement regarding the disorder in April 2015. She
came out
Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.
Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...
as a lesbian at the
Golden Melody Awards
The Golden Melody Awards (), commonly abbreviated as GMA, is an honor awarded by Taiwan's Ministry of Culture to recognize outstanding achievement in the Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Formosan-languages popular and traditional music in ...
in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
in 2017. She married Taiwanese cinematographer Fisher Yu in 2016. The couple registered their marriage in Canada.
Death
Loo died after falling from her apartment building in
Happy Valley, Hong Kong
Happy Valley () is an upper-income residential area in Hong Kong, located on Hong Kong Island. The area is bordered by Caroline Hill to the east, Jardine's Lookout to the south, Morrison Hill to the west, and Causeway Bay to the north. Administ ...
on 5 August 2018,
at the age of 32. The case was classified as suicide by police after checking
CCTV
Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...
footage of the building. No suicide note was found.
Publications
*''Lost. Escape. Rockmuiology'' – A collection of the photographs she took over 3 years of her life with her Revue 35CC camera prior to the publication, accompanied by a series of writings (in English). 240 pages, published by Youth Culture (青春文化) in July 2006, Hong Kong, .
Interview – Ellen Joyce Loo
''Milk magazine'' 267, 2006
* ''I learned the chords at 17'', collection of 22 original guitar scores from ''at17s songs, transcribed by Loo in both standard notation and guitar tablature
Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches.
Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...
. 2005, published by People Mountain People Sea / Kubrick, Hong Kong,
References
External links
at17's official website (in Chinese)
http://www.at17.net (in Chinese)
Bitetone Presents﹣Our 2011 Best 35 Chinese Records
《掀起》
Bitetone Presents 2012 Best 20 Records From China, Hong Kong and Taiwan
《你安安靜靜地躲起來》
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loo, Ellen Joyce
1986 births
2018 deaths
Hong Kong former Christians
Musicians from Toronto
Cantopop singers
Canadian people of Hong Kong descent
21st-century Hong Kong women singers
Hong Kong women singer-songwriters
Hong Kong record producers
Hong Kong rock guitarists
Fingerstyle guitarists
LGBT musicians from Hong Kong
LGBT songwriters
Canadian lesbian musicians
Filmed deaths from falls
Suicides by jumping in Hong Kong
21st-century women guitarists
2018 suicides
Hong Kong idols
20th-century LGBT people
21st-century LGBT people
Canadian-born Hong Kong artists