Adilia Yip

Born in Hong Kong, Dr. Adilia Yip is a marimbist/percussionist and artistic researcher based in Belgium. She is the main investigator for project “ReSoXy—Re-Sounding the Xylophone Collection from the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (Belgium)”, jointly funded by BELSPO - Belgian Science Policy Office and Royal Conservatoire Antwerp. In 2018, Adilia has obtained the Doctoral in arts degree (PhD) jointly offered by the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp and the University of Antwerp. She is a docARTES alumnus of the Orpheus Institute, Ghent. Her artistic research project “Inventing New Marimba Performance from the West African Balafon Practice” was supervised by Prof. dr. Kathleen Coessens and Prof. dr. Henk De Smaele.

Her passion in exploring different musical genres and cultures have led to exciting collaborations that crossing the genres of classical, contemporary, world and popular music. Her artistic language continues to expand through artistic research, co-creation and intercultural collaboration. She is the co-founder of “The Bracket Percussion” for multidisciplinary and participatory percussion projects (Klinken Percussie Festival, Voice Your Diversity etc), and “Duo Antwerp” for bass clarinet and marimba.

As a solo and chamber musician, she was invited to perform and present her projects at international festivals, prestige venues and institutions, such as, The Festival de Musica de Canarias, Radio Klara, Belgian Music Days, Percussive Arts Society International Convention, aNOther Festival Vienna, Sfinks Mixed Festival, TEDx, Bermeo Music Week (Spain), Chinese Music Rocks! (Hong Kong), Centre Cultural La Beneficència (Valencia), 5th International Clarinet Festival Gent, Hong Kong Fringe Club, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (Europe), and Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Kingdom of Belgium. In 2011, she has formed chamber music group "Duo Antwerp" with bass clarinetist Daniel Bellovi, which they have already commissioned, arranged and performed over 30 compositions for the exclusive instrumental collaboration. She has obtained the Master in percussion degree at Royal Conservatoire Antwerp under the guidance of Prof. dr. Ludwig Albert and Prof. Leo Ouderits.

Her interests in traditional music have led to cross-cultural music collaborations with traditional African, Chinese, Japanese and Mexican musicians, such as the balafon and marimba duo Balafon Meets Marimba (2012-16); contemporary compositions for marimba and erhu (2017); ONNA project (2018) with Japanese taiko drummers and Chinese percussionist; and Motzu (2014-16) Mexican marimba ensemble. She has also founded "The Bracket Percussion" for multidisciplinary percussion projects. The ensemble has collaborated with Belgian installation and visual artists, puppeteers, actors and authors in different projects, such as Vlinders (2012-15) a puppet percussion-theater based on the Chinese romance The Butterfly Lovers; Mictlan (2015) a percussion-theatre based on the Mexican Aztec mythology of the underworld; and Malleus (2019) a performance on an installation of 200 hammers by Arnd Christian Müller.

For the academic world, Adilia is the founder of ARIA seminar series “Method/Art” (2019-23). She has given lecture-recitals, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, masterclasses and presentations at Royal Conservatory Brussels, Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, Escola superior de musica e artes do espetaculo Porto (ESMAE), Fontys Conservatorium Tilburg, University of California, San Diego, and among others. She has published on Studia Instrumentorum Musicae Popularis, Music + Practice, Resonancias, FORUM+, (Re)Making Collections. Origins and Trajectories, and other magazines and books.