Career
Koo was sponsored by Sir Run Run Shaw to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the early 60s. Upon graduation he returned to Hong Kong and worked for both the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest movie studios. Later he joined TVB as their director of music, where from the late 1970s until immigrating to Canada in the 1990s, he collaborated with the lyricist Wong Jim on many memorable TV theme songs. Koo has composed over 1,200 songs in his career, many of his songs are now considered as classic Cantopop.
In 1962, he composed his first hit (Mandarin Chinese) song 夢 and later another hit song 郊道. In 1974, he wrote the first Cantonese TV theme song (啼笑姻緣) which was the actual first popular Cantopop song.
Koo received Member of Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1982. In 1998, he received the Bronze Bauhinia Star from the Hong Kong Government. He also received other awards including Music Accomplishment Award (from Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong Ltd.), Highest Honour Award (from RTHK Ten Best Chinese Music Program), Best Music Award and Best Lyric Award (from Asia Film Festival), Hong Kong Film Awards, Taiwan's Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards and many others.
In more recent years he has spent much of his time in Vancouver, Canada where he had emigrated.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Koo
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