The conductor Yip Wing Sie was born in Canton in 1960 and brought up in Hong Kong, receiving her first piano lessons from her mother at the age of four and training in music theory and conducting from her father, Dr. Yip Wai Hong, as she grew older. She toured widely between 1972 and 1978 with her father's Hong Kong Children's Choir, assisting him as conductor during the 1978 tour of the U.S.A. From 1978 to 1982 Yip Wing Sie studied at the Royal College of Music in London, with a Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club Scholarship, winning prizes as a violinist, an exhibition and the Sir Adrian Boult Conducting Scholarship. There followed study in the U.S.A at Indiana University, where she completed her Master's Degree in violin and conducting in 1985. In September that year she won first prize in the Besan on Concours International des Jeunes Chefs d'Orchestre, winning the Koussevitzky Memorial Scholarship in 1986, enabling her to study at Tanglewood with Seiji Ozawa, Leonard Bernstein, Gustav Meier and Rozhdestvensky. In September 1986 Yip Wing Sie was appointed Resident Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
