SINGAPORE COMPOSERS FESTIVAL 2026
Morse Percussion &
SYC Ensemble Singers
The Theatre Practice, 54 Waterloo Street
Sunday (7 June 2026)
11.30 am & 4.30 pm
This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 June 2026 with the title "Singaporean and South Korean talents on display".
Only in its second edition, the Singapore Composers Festival 2026 organised by Composers Society of Singapore (CSS) was an eight-hour affair that included two public roundtable chats and two concerts of contemporary music.
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| Singaporean and South Korean composers with members of Morse Percussion. |
The opening concert was a showcase for CSS and South Korean composer collective Space For Sound, with eight works performed by Morse Percussion, comprising Derek Koh, Joachim Lim, Cheong Kah Yiong and Yuru Lee. Those who regard music for percussion as just “banging on cans” will be surprised by the variety of sounds generated.
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| Photo: Amos Poh |
Toh Yan Ee’s Atlas opened the show with timpani skins being scraped before proceeding to intricate rhythms on pitched percussion (marimba and xylophone) resembling gamelan, and drumming that extolled the majesty of the eponymous star constellation. Varying the sound palette completely, Won Jung Lee’s The Glittering Diamond Water delighted in extreme high registers. Minimalist textures emanating from marimba, slung gongs and bowed vibraphone keys, created a beautifully ethereal effect that bears repeated listening.
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| Photo: Amos Poh |
The next two works were the most violent. Somin Lee’s Death of First-Borns was some orgy of militarist might, dominated by snare-drum, cymbals, triangles and xylophone employed strictly for beats not melody. The wanton biblical slaughter of Egyptians was its depiction. Hoh Chung Shih’s Rounding Round celebrated round objects, recurrent subjects as in a rondo (round dance) and three players rotating positions around a central axis of instruments. This later erupted into a free-for-all with mallets hurled in all directions.
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| Photo: Amos Poh |
This concert was clearly a playground for exploring new sounds and techniques. Seung-ki Hong’s Resonant Ritual continued in its vein, tinkling on metal, tribal-drumming and walking in circles, now in a counter-clockwise direction. Hye-Jeong Hwang Lee’s Percussion Sanjo was a modern-day update of the traditional Korean sanjo instrumental essay with hints of melody emerging from a marimba, amid more drumming. All four works by Korean composers were world premieres
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| Photo: Amos Poh |
Two local composers closed the matinee, with Emily Koh’s emoyo describing the emotional yo-yo involved in getting an American green card. Judging by the lack of angst, it was probably not such an ordeal. Tan Yuting’s Kotekan revelled in the repeated harmonic patterns found in gamelan, realised with mini-cymbals, temple blocks and a drum-set.
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| Photo: Amos Poh |
The festival’s closing concert was the CSS Young Composer Forum, where budding composers were mentored by established practitioners in the creating music for choir. The 22-member SYC Ensemble Singers led by Jennifer Tham did the honours for seven works by mentee and mentor.
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| Photo: Amos Poh |
Anvay Mathur’s Anahata, Sanskrit word for “unstruck sound”, relied on long-held syllables, vocal drones and sliding between pitches. Thomas Kai-ren Rettig’s Greenland used his friend Elliot Chew’s poem to eloquently describe a distant and unattainable goal, unrelated to Donald Trump’s territorial designs.
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| Photo: Amos Poh |
The very dry acoustic in the venue’s black box theatre, while excellent for percussion, was far less conducive for voices. Despite the choir’s spotless diction, the first word of Bae Jun Soo’s Luminate, bi-cheul (빛을 or light), sounded like “bitch”, an unintended consequence. The next two works, Ding Jian Han’s Silenc(E)mpty? and Estene Cheong’s Why, had long stretches of spoken words, with the voices suspended in some form of sprechgesang (speech-song), a favourite technique of polytonalists.
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| Photo: Amos Poh |
Alicia De Silva’s Quando La Rota used words from Dante’s Divine Comedy, closing in a devotional tone with visions of paradise within sight. To close, Danny Imson’s Ama Namin or The Lord’s Prayer in Tagalog opened with a very even unison. A mixed tape was slowly unreeled linking all the performers, before they walked off stage in a procession as the music dissipated into nothingness.
Both concerts at the Singapore Composers Festival were a veritable showcase of local creative talent, and long may that continue.
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