Joyce Lau was born and raised in Hong Kong. After reading music at the Chung Chi College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she went on to the Graduate School to conduct researches on Jewish music in Hong Kong. In addition to Bachelor of Arts and Master of Philosophy in Music, she obtained Postgraduate Diploma in Education with a focus on primary music education. She is currently studying at the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Hungary. During her studies, she has been awarded numerous scholarships such as DAAD Scholarship, Peter Curzon Oram Charitable Trust Scholarship, Sir Robert Black Trust Fund Scholarship and Sarolta Kodály Scholarship.
As a musician, Lau plays the organ and the piano and is trained in classical singing. She holds Licentiate Diploma in Recital in Organ issued by Trinity College London. While in Hong Kong, she performed regularly and worked as a part-time church organist. She is also experienced in choral conducting and piano accompaniment and has participated in orchestral conducting workshops and masterclasses. For teaching, she was trained in Yamaha music education and the Vienna Boys Choir method developed by the choir’s artistic director Gerald Wirth. At the moment, she is studying the world-renowned Kodály music pedagogy.
Lau has strong interests in ethnomusicology and music theory. She has given presentations at major conferences organized by the International Council for Traditional Music, as well as in symposia held in various academic institutions. She translated an article by Chinese scholar Jiafang Dai about Model Peking Opera to English and it was published by Palgrave Macmillan as a book chapter. At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she has led several knowledge transfer projects to restore old musical instruments and promote historically informed music performance, on which she co-wrote a research paper with Dr. Tsan-huang Tsai lately. Her next projects are related to topics in musical discourse analysis and aesthetics.