INITIATIVES

Compo Corner #3

15th Jul 2018

Supported by Composers Society Singapore (CSS)

For our third edition, we were incredibly privileged to have composers Peter Ivan Edwards and Tan Chan Boon speak on their music. Peter presented an overview of recent compositional activities, sharing chamber works as well as his application of the cognitive linguistic concept of Force Dynamics. Tan Chan Boon spoke about his regularly performed String Quartet No.2 and provide an in-depth analysis of the composition. It was a fascinating afternoon of 2 veteran composers of drastically different styles, but who were interestingly asking themselves similar questions when it came to the process of writing music.

Compo Corner #2

10th Mar 2018

Supported by Composers Society Singapore (CSS)

For the second edition of Compo Corner, we had a truly stellar line up of speakers. Jon Lin Chua spoke about her research into timbral analysis based on music by Helmut Lachenmann, Dr. Pow Jun Kai spoke about a composer's social responsibilities, and Dr. Robert Casteels amazed us with his ideas behind his work time:space. He even brought along the instrument he built for it!

Compo Corner is a series of presentations where local composers present their music in a casual setting. It's open to anyone interested in finding more about our local classical contemporary music scene, especially musicians and artists from different art forms.

Writing Music For Instruments From Different Cultures

24th Oct, 10th Nov, 16th Nov 2017

Supported by National Youth Council (NYC) and National Youth Fund (NYF)

This initiative was a by-product from my commission, titled Shroud, by Composers Society of Singapore (CSS) and Composers Association of New Zealand (CANZ), supported by National Arts Council (NAC) and Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO).

After completing the music writing and performance portion of my work for Maori, Chinese and Western instruments (a first of its kind), I visited 3 institutions - Catholic High School, Temasek Junior College, Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) - to share my learning experience with young, budding musicians.

During the process of writing the aforementioned work, I found myself returning to the basics of writing for an instrument - researching about the instrument's techniques, trying to under its physics, and what's stylistically idiomatic and musical. Thus, my lecture broke down this process into a scientific plan, walking the students through a step-by-step method to preparing and writing for an instrument they have never written for. Hopefully, they would be able to apply this in their future works.

Needless to say, their youthful energy and curiosity left me with more lessons than I probably shared with them. A big thank you to the teachers and students of CHS, TJC and ACSI (pictured below), it was an immense honour and pleasure!

Compo Corner #1

29th Oct 2017

Supported by Composers Society Singapore (CSS)

Compo Corner is a series of presentations where local composers present their music in a casual setting. It's open to anyone interested in finding more about our local classical contemporary music scene, especially musicians and artists from different art forms.

This was the first edition of Compo Corner and it was warmly hosted by Dr Ho Chung Shih, President of CSS, with a turn out of between 15-20 attendees. We kicked it off with 4 young speakers - Bertram Wee, Ding Jian Han, Syafiqah 'Adha Sallehin and myself - each presenting a recent work of ours. It was an incredibly enriching afternoon listening to the ideas of other composers and interacting with all who attended. Thank you for making Compo Corner #1 a success!

Syafiqah 'Adha Sallehin - 'Ikan Girl' a multidisciplinary work

Ding Jian Han - 'Sound, Sighs & Stories' for Alto Flute and Horn in F

Daniel Lim - 'Shroud' for mixed ensemble

Bertram Wee - 'lionheart' for string instrument