Teresa Carpio

Template:Infobox Chinese-language singer and actor Teresa Carpio (born in Hong Kong) is a Hong Kong English pop and Cantopop singer, actress, and singing teacher. She is the mother of singer T.V. Carpio.

Family background

Carpio's father is Filipino and her mother Chinese. Born into a musical family. (Her grandfather was a concert violinist and jazz guitarist, her father Fernando, a jazz drummer, and several uncles were also professional musicians.) Carpio began her career as a child star, winning Hong Kong's first Amateur Talent Quest in 1963 at the age of 6.

Career

For several years from 1975 onwards Carpio had her own TV variety show in Hong Kong, on which she performed both solo and with several of her siblings. She released many albums in Hong Kong from 1976 onwards; her early releases under EMI such as the EMI's "Sound Hit" series on vinyl record. Eventually six of her album under EMI went gold, in which she featured cover versions in English of western hits, including an album with George Lam. She made numerous television appearances in Hong Kong, in the late 1970s.

Carpio was the first and the youngest Hong Kong singer ever to appear on national TV in Japan. She has performed in many other countries as far apart as Singapore, Malaysia, Tahiti, Australia, Japan, Thailand, Brunei, the USA and Canada.

With the growing popularity of Cantopop, Carpio started to record in Cantonese along with English, remaining popular despite increasing competition from newer stars, notably Anita Mui. Carpio broadened her career into acting with appearances in a number of films, and auditioned for the lead role in Miss Saigon. Though this eventually went to Lea Salonga, Teresa took the lead role in the 1979 San Jose, California production of the stage musical City of Broken Promises, based on the book by Austin Coates, a story set in Macau which won "Best Original Musical" for 1975. Another starring stage role was in 68 performances of I Have A Date With Spring in Hong Kong in 2001. Carpio appeared on the cover of the December 1986 issue of the Hong Kong edition of Playboy magazine, which featured a topless pictorial of her.

In 1980, Carpio sang for a charity in Penang, Malaysia to help save the life of a 14 year old girl needing heart surgery. She helped raise $8000 Dollars.

Following her second marriage, Carpio moved to Canada and focused her attention on bringing up her family (she has three daughters; the eldest, T. V. Carpio, by her first marriage, also an actor, singer and songwriter). However, Carpio still makes occasional concert appearances, including a series of performances with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003 that became a Hong Kong bestseller on CD and DVD.

Carpio now teaches singing to children, and has established her own music schools in Canada and Hong Kong. She has also coached Hong Kong stars including Sandy Lam, Sammi Cheng, Jade Kwan, Cecilia Cheung, Joey Yung, Gigi Leung, Alex To, Edmund Leung, Twins, Wong Cho Lam and many more. Gigi Leung and other popular local singers, including Jacky Cheung and George Lam, have appeared as guest performers in some of Carpio's concerts. She and Lam gave a series of joint concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum in 2007. More recently she appeared on Hong Kong television as a judge and head vocal coach on season two of the singing competition The Voice.

She lived in Springfield, Missouri with her second husband, journalist Andreas Panayi. She has since moved and resides in Hong Kong again.

Christmas Eve 2012, she along with Michael Wong sung at The Joint in Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and invited her youngest daughter Serena to sing a song.

External links

• Teresa Carpio, Asia's First Lady of Song - Official website; includes an incomplete discography
• Teresa Carpio at IMDb
• HK cinemagic entry