I am surprised and so very sorry to learn Richard Tang Yuk died on Friday in Trinidad and Tobago, where he made his home. He was 65-years-old.

For years, Tang Yuk was instrumental in making Princeton a June destination for music-lovers, through his founding of The Princeton Festival in 2004. As executive and artistic director, he oversaw quality opera, musical theater, chamber music, Baroque, jazz, dance, and multi-media presentations.

The festival grew in scale under his leadership, from two events and four performances at its inception, to encompass eight events and 22 performances, in addition to 20 free lectures and workshops, in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic led to the cancellation of live musicmaking in 2020. The organization pivoted by offering material for online streaming, but Tang Yuk stepped down from the directorship a few months after the season, such as it was, concluded.

His opera performances at McCarter Theatre earned acclaim in such publications as Opera News and The New York Times. Repertoire during his tenure was always an engaging balance of the familiar and unusual. Tang Yuk and his crackerjack team of technicians presented uniformly excellent productions of “The Flying Dutchman,” “Peter Grimes,” “Porgy and Bess,” “The Rake’s Progress,” “Nixon in China,” Handel’s “Ariodante,” and a double-bill of “Gianni Schicchi” and Rachmaninoff’s “Francesca da Rimini,” among others.

At various points in his career, he also served on the music faculties of Westminster Conservatory of Music, Indiana University Bloomington, and Princeton University.

I interviewed him several times, on the air, and most recently for an oral history of The Princeton Festival for the Princeton Symphony Orchestra (which revived the enterprise in 2022, with performances over several weeks each June, including opera presented under a state-of-the-art performance pavilion on the grounds of Morven Museum and Garden).

Tang Yuk did much to enrich the musical life of his adopted hometown, here in Central Jersey. His passing comes as a shock. He preserved his youthful appearance, trim and seemingly in good health when I saw him last year. I’m glad I got to see him again so recently and to tell him how much those opera performances at McCarter meant to me.

Thank you, Richard, and R.I.P.