1. Share with us your journey on how you started composing!<\/strong><\/p>\nI think since young, I\u2019ve always been interested in musically taking things apart, and reconstructing them again. I owe a great deal of this to my parents, who encouraged my musical development through providing piano lessons and more crucially, getting me to try the Music Elective Programme (MEP) in my secondary school days.<\/p>\n
A crucial developmental process was cultivating a consistent habit of reading music. When I started taking MEP in school, I would usually read a score of music every day. It didn\u2019t have to be a complete score: sometimes I would just look through 8 \u2013 16 bars, and sometimes I will revisit these scores again in the future. I ended up collecting and listening to a wide range of music over the years \u2013 from Bach Cantatas to Schumann\u2019s Piano Music to Stravinsky\u2019s Ballets. This gave me a diverse exposure to a wide spectrum of music and it was honestly such a magical experience! There were many good days back in school where I would take random scores, read through them, and improvise with them.<\/p>\n
This and other habits only really fermented when I entered Eunoia Junior College. Studying 20th Century American Music gave me new perspectives on modern music and for a time I was really enchanted with new sounds and processes. With great teachers (Mr Lee Ji Heng, Ms Joanne Yeo, and Dr Gooi Tah Choe), as well as being surrounded by like-minded peers, all of them encouraged me to take composition on a more serious and professional level.<\/p>\n
Since then, I\u2019ve embarked on a bunch of different projects, some of which involved getting a bunch of close friends and just having fun experimenting together. This love for constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing music has only continued to deepen and grow with time, and I\u2019m really excited for what\u2019s to come in the future in YST!<\/p>\n
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2. Share with us about your inspiration and compositional process for your piece \u2018enthalpy III\u2019 that was recently showcased at the Singapore Composers Festival.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe enthalpy series to me, is my fray into modern compositional techniques and processes.<\/p>\n
At that time, I wanted to create pieces that juxtaposed between extremes \u2013 works of really high frantic intensity, and works of low ambient intensity. Attending more concerts of new music, in particular the WAParty last year, gave me a lot more new perspectives and encouraged me to try out, among other things, electronic music for the Young Composers Forum.<\/p>\n
Two key points of my thinking are as follows:<\/p>\n
\n- Organic Form<\/u>: Rather than delineating forms, the form itself is created through the gradual transformation of materials, with sudden abrupt interjections to generate interest.<\/li>\n
- Expectations<\/u>: I like to play around with your audience to create an active relationship between audience and the music. In this context, jumpscares and excruciating bursts of noise were a means of creating discomfort and suspense.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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3. Apart from composing, you also seem quite active in conducting. How has your conducting experience impacted your composition style\/process?<\/strong><\/p>\nTo me, I see a parallel between conducting and composing music. Both disciplines require me to take things apart and put them together and to be clear and intentional with what sounds I want. As a mental exercise, with any score I work on, be it mine or others, I try to isolate different combinations of instruments to hear how they sound. I feel this trains me to be more aware of the subtlest of musical details, and this gives me greater precision when it comes to creating music on paper, or during rehearsal with my musicians.<\/p>\n
In some regards, there is also a symbiotic relationship between these two for me. In conducting, rehearsal techniques, real time interactions and interpretative studies help me to gain a better perspective on what can and cannot be achieved in my music and to be more sensitive in my colours. As a composer, analysing music and a constant interrogation of another composer\u2019s musical intention allows me to gain better insight into the works which I am rehearsing and to pick up much more intricate details during rehearsals.<\/p>\n
Yet, one major difference in particular is the live and responsive aspect of conducting. When I am on my desk writing, I have the luxury of time to be as specific and as definite with what sounds I want. That can\u2019t be said when on the podium when you are pressed for time. To quote from one of my teachers Dr Ambrose, \u201cyou can\u2019t predict when a traffic light turns red, you just have to apply the brakes when that happens\u201d. In a similar way, there is only so much that I can foresee and prepare as a conductor, and things do not usually go the way I fully expect on the podium. This requires me to constantly adapt to the needs of my players at each time, and it has taught me how to be more flexible, accommodating, and quick to adjust my music to the needs of the musicians I am writing for.<\/p>\n
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4. What are some of your upcoming projects\/works that we can look forward to?<\/strong><\/p>\nUp to this point, my focus has always been on experimentation, going for breadth of exposure by trying new things and generating ideas quickly. I complemented this with reading and listening to all sorts of scores and music.<\/p>\n
I would regard all of my work\/sketches\/drafts up to this point more as pre-compositions<\/strong>: springboards for experimentation for me to know what works and doesn\u2019t. As I continue with my studies in YST, I aim to avoid falling into the trap of blindly writing premiere after premiere. Rather, I\u2019m taking my time to write works with much greater depth and substance that can survive its first performance. I\u2019m taking the rest of the year to think through composition in greater detail, and I\u2019ll return with more interesting things in the next!<\/p>\nConducting wise, there are also some really exciting concerts coming up! My team and I are still firming up some details \u2013 do follow my group @recintawindsymphony<\/a> on IG for more updates in the coming months!<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since 2020, the Composers Society of Singapore (CSS) has been releasing a monthly series for our Musings section, Composer of the Month! The Composer of the Month for September 2024 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,10,21],"tags":[61],"class_list":["post-1417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-composer-of-the-month","category-css-projects","category-musings","tag-61"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8458,"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions\/8458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssingapore.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}