Music lessons for disadvantaged Hong Kong children bring hope and possibility of finding passion

Not-for-profit group working with more than 1,200 students in one of city’s poorest neighbourhoods sees prospects rise with Jockey Club fund.

At 5pm on a Friday, a modest, ground-floor office in a Sham Shui Po housing complex becomes a jumble of small bodies and snatches of music. Students in different school uniforms stream into the back room to line up in neat rows or pull instruments out of their cases. A boy with a saxophone half his size blows out a few initial notes; another pings out one final scale on a silver…