Hong Kong-born Cheng Xin Ip graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music, UK, with a Master of Music in Timpani and Orchestral Percussion Performance under the tutelage of Ian Wright, Simone Rebello, Paul Patrick, Graham Johns, Liz Gilliver and Le Yu, where he was awarded the Southern Percussion Prize. Prior to that, Ip obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Music in Percussion Performance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) under Sophia Woo and Louis Siu, where he was twice awarded the Parsons Music Foundation Scholarship and the Chung Chi Departmental Prize.
Ip has performed in venues and concert halls across the globe, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, South Korea, UK, USA, Canada, and collaborated with artists such as Vassily Sinaisky, Antony Hermus, Eric Whitacre, and Twoset Violin, etc. Ip was selected as an RTHK Young Music Maker by Radio Television Hong Kong in 2019, making magazine, television, radio appearances and recorded solo performances for TV show and CD release.
Ip developed an interest in conducting during his secondary school days, where he was the student conductor of the school’s Symphony Orchestra and Wind Orchestra. Ip made his debut as a conductor during his undergraduate years when he was made Vice-President and Resident Conductor of the CUHK Student Orchestra. Ip made numerous appearances as a Guest Conductor to conduct concertos for graduating students, and was invited to be Guest Conductor for his alma mater’s Old Boys’ Wind Orchestra in 2019. Ip has participated in conducting workshops and masterclasses hosted by Martyn Brabbins, Toby Purser, Clark Rundell, and Mark Heron.
Ip was recently named a conducting fellow at the Domaine Forget de Charlevoix 2023, where he had the privilege of studying with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Kensho Watanabe, and assisted in their performances with the Orchestre Métropolitain and the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec.
Ip is currently the Resident Conductor of the Brock House Orchestra; he is also a Graduate Student in the Orchestral Conducting programme at the University of British Columbia under the tutelage of Dr. Jonathan Girard and is the Assistant Conductor of the UBC Symphony Orchestra. Ip’s past conducting teachers and mentors include Kelvin Ngai, Ho-man Choi, Mark Heron and Toby Purser.