Susan Wong - Biography

Biography

She was born in Hong Kong, and immigrated to Sydney, Australia with her family at the age of seven. Musically inclined from a young age, she learned to play the piano at age five and later she also learned the violin. At Kambala Girls School in Sydney, she sang alto in the choir and appeared in the school dramas (Gilbert & Sullivan & the like) and entered a number of piano competitions. She received an associate diploma (ATCL) in piano from Trinity College London.

Her first break in the music world was at the age of sixteen when her parents entered her for a singing contest in Sydney. It was organized by TVB with the winner to be offered a recording contract with one of the big music companies in Hong Kong. She won the competition and went to Hong Kong, where she met with the TVB producers who wanted her to sign with one of the music labels. After much deliberation she decided that a music career wasn’t right for her at that time and instead returned to Australia to study at University.

After graduating from university, she returned to Hong Kong in 1997 to help run her family’s accounting business; at this time, she gained her CPA certification. One of her students, who she was teaching piano, was working for a Hong Kong independent label, and Susan asked the boss if they wanted a singer. Susan started recording her favourite English songs and made the album ‘Close To You’. When the album came out in 2002, it was widely acclaimed and quickly became a favourite of music stores to play. The album was soon climbing up the sales charts in countries like [Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. The four album releases since ‘Close To You’ have also enjoyed wide critical and commercial success establishing Susan as probably the No. 1 selling English language female singer of her genre throughout South East Asia.

In early 2007, Susan Wong signed a new recording agreement with Hong Kong based Evolution Limited and released her first album under Evolution in August 2007.

The first release under this agreement, Someone Like You, was recorded in Nashville, USA and was quick to win critical and commercial success throughout S.E. Asia. The success of the SACD version in particular bore testament to the fine production, vocal performance and mastering by Grammy award winning engineer Doug Sax. The album was domestically released in Japan in September 2008.

Susan’s recorded her second album, 511 for the evosound label in Geneva Switzerland with producer Adrien Zerbini. The album surprised many with her fresh bossa nova influenced versions of songs such as Michael Jackson’s Bille Jean and Hall’s & Oates Every Time You Go Away. Billie Jean received extensive airplay throughout S.E.Asia and a version on YouTube received over 450,000 views many of which came from viewers in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico further establishing Susan as one of Hong Kong’s mostly widely listened to artists throughout the world.

Returning to Geneva in 2010 Susan started work again with producer Adrien Zerbini along with guitarist Ignacio Lamas. The recordings mostly concentrated on sparse acoustic new interpretations of classic pop songs from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s including the songs California Dreaming, Sound of Silence and Have You Ever Seen The Rain. The album particularly resonated with audiophile fans across the world. The ‘studio master’ download of the album peaked at No.1 on the Linn Records ‘studio master’ download chart and spent over six months in the Top 10.

Five years on from her first visit Susan Wong returned to Nashville to record at the world famous Ocean Way Studio. Ocean Way studio is housed in a converted church with wonderful acoustics.

The live in the studio project was released on CD, SACD, HQCD in December 2012 with the live DVD / blu-ray is scheduled for release in August 2013. Susan, who has been labeled as the ‘Queen of audiophile’, for her soft and sultry vocal style and laid-back music that has won the hearts of her wide and diverse legion of loyal fans. From those audiophile enthusiasts who enjoy listening to fine recordings to young listeners who adore the heart touching love songs the one thing that unites all her fans is their knowledge that they’ve discovered Asia’s best kept secret.