Michael Kwan Ching-kit is a Hong Kong

Cantopop Cantopop (a contraction of "Cantonese pop music") or HK-pop (short for "Hong Kong pop music") is a genre of pop music written in standard Chinese and sung in Cantonese. Cantopop is also used to refer to the cultural context of its production ...

singer previously with the

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

label (the brand

Polygram PolyGram N.V. was a multinational entertainment company and major music record label formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a ...

was not adopted until later in Hong Kong), and later with

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...

. His back catalogue (1986–1988) continues to be published by

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch– American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...

. He retired his music career in 1988 and now works as an architect in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, United States, with his wife and son.

Biography

Kwan was born in 1949 in Hong Kong, he attended St. Paul's Co-educational College and graduated in 1969. He was admitted in the

University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong (HKU) (Chinese: 香港大學) is a public research university in Hong Kong. Founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, it is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong. HKU was also the fi ...

in the same year and later graduated with a degree of

Bachelor of Architecture The Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) is a bachelor's degree designed to satisfy the academic requirement of practising architecture around the world. Australia Architectural education in Australia varies depending on the university offering th ...

. Kwan practiced architecture full-time after graduation and founded his practice in 1983. His wife is also an architect. Due to his amateur status as a singer, he was never eligible to be awarded lifetime achievement awards despite having sung 78 theme songs for

Hong Kong television drama Hong Kong television drama () refers to televised dramatic programming produced mainly by the territory's two free-to-air TV networks of Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) and Asia Television (ATV) until its license expired. Locally produced t ...

s, like '' Reincarnated'' (1978). Before the 1970s, he was an English folk song singer for The Swinging Minstrels. He also declined to accept the Golden Needle Award in 1993 due to him being out of the spotlight for so long. The award was not awarded at all that year. He did receive an equivalent of Meritorious Service Medal from the Queen in 1985 for services to Cantopop.

References

1949 births Living people Alumni of the University of Hong Kong Hong Kong male singers Hong Kong architects Place of birth missing (living people) Alumni of St. Paul's Co-educational College Architects from Seattle {{HongKong-singer-stub