SINGAPORE COMPOSERS FESTIVAL 2026 / Morse Percussion & SYC Ensemble Singers

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Singapore Composers Festival 2026 - Composers Society of Singapore

A:LIVE / Morse Percussion / Review

A:LIVE

Morse Percussion

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

Friday (18 March 2022)

 

There is probably no better time than now for percussionists in Singapore. And there are likely more professional percussionists active here than ever before. The formation in 2020 of Morse Percussion, a professional ensemble in the mould of Kroumata or Repercussion, is a sign of these heady times. And there is no shortage of local composers to write for percussion, as illustrated in this concert of fascinating contrasts and variety.

 

Five composers were represented this evening, beginning with Tony Makarome’s Kuanzhai Xiangzi performed by four players. The title refers to a popular tourist district in Chengdu, Sichuan province known for its architecture, culture, wide and narrow streets. Rhythmically vibrant and light-hearted, it unapologetically fused Western with Eastern influences. Melodic interest was provided by vibraphone and marimba, while the slung Chinese cymbal gave it an exotic feel. Pentatonic melodies abounded, including one similar to the Oriental central section of Ravel’s Laideronette, Imperatrice des Pagodes from his Mother Goose ballet. Totally enjoyable.

 

August Lum’s A Well-Matched Fight V.2.0 featured just three percussionists on drums. Inspired by Chinese martial arts, notably the exploits of Marvel Comics’ hero Shang-Chi, this is a battle piece for unpitched percussion. A snare drum heralded a call to arms, and a showdown between two opposing players ensued. The work is not scored, and thus relying on improvisation by both drummers. Yet the work did not convey the idea of randomness, but rather something choreographed, judging by their pugilistic postures and wushu inflected movements on stage. Their mutual stares of daggers also gave the work an edge of high tension and uncertainty.   

 

Completely different was Avik Chari’s V.I.D.A., where the use of pre-recorded electronics dominated initial proceedings but gradually became a complement for the four percussionists. The title refers to life itself, but its initials spell roles played by the foursome, that of a visionary, introvert, dreamer and adventurer. The music was serene, even poetic, with a laid-back feel provided by the striking of a Tibetan bowl and stroking of a wooden frog. This is as much a nature piece as one inspired, according to the composer, by the emergence of artificial intelligence.    

 

The only aggressively atonal piece was Morsus by Chua Jon Lin, also the only woman composer among the five. Its title was partly derived from the ensemble’s name and the Latin word for bite, describing a sharp lancinating pain. Only four instruments – tam tam, marimba, vibraphone and snare-drum – were used. The tam tam was bowed rather than struck, producing a scraping timbral effect, while the snare drum struck when being laid upside down caused an unearthly buzzing sound. Call this avant garde, and it conjured up a suitably nightmarish soundscape.

 

Tour de force for the evening was Jonathan Shin’s Mad Dog Mancha, calling for seven players in all, with the composer himself at the piano. The title itself alluded to a quixotic Iberian spirit, one that is vigorous rhythmic, full of emphatic ostinatos yet totally unpredictable. Calling this West Side Story updated and on steroids would not be too far from the truth. Its grimy, inner city ghetto-like vibe coloured with a gamelan-like precision interplay (with no less than four pitched instruments) brought out the loudest cheers from a clearly enthused audience.   

 

Time just flew by in the hour-long concert, much helped by the pre-recorded interviews with the five composers. Morse Percussion, manned by virtuosos Derek Koh, Joachim Lim, Cheong Kah Yiong, Yuru Lee, Sng Yiang Shan and Tan Lee Ying, is a force for new music to be reckoned with. 

COMPASSION / Singapore International Festival of Arts / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2021

 

THE CONSOLER

Take 5

The Arts House

Wednesday (19 May 2021)

 

GHOSTS OF YESTERYEAR

Morse Percussion

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (20 May 2021)

 

ALONE TOGETHER

Li Churen, Yang Shuxiang & Leslie Tan

The Arts House

Saturday (22 May 2021)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 26 May 2021

 

Compassion is the series of eight chamber concerts in this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts, specially curated to reflect on the Covid pandemic and its tragic toll. Over the past year, the nation had gone into partial lockdown, lives and livelihoods were lost, but ways of coping were found and an indomitable spirit prevailed.

 

Four concerts involving voice and wind instruments had been cancelled, but the remaining recitals still had cogent stories and messages to convey. The Consoler provided an hour of 20^th century piano quintet music, forged from the trials of two world wars.

 

The Russian Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet was conceived under a pall of Stalinist totalitarianism, hence its seemingly traditional forms were coloured by a tragicomic personal voice. Frenchman Charles Koechlin’s Piano Quintet composed in the wake of First World War carnage and the Spanish influenza pandemic gave the impression of sunshine breaking through a sea of dense clouds.

 

Take 5, comprising pianist Lim Yan, violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, violist Janice Tsai (replacing Chan Yoong Han) and cellist Chan Wei Shing, wrung out every bit of pathos possible from both works. While Shostakovich’s faux congeniality posed an illusion of hope, it was Koechlin’s humanity which yielded true consolation.

 

The four young musicians of Morse Percussion - Derek Koh, Joachim Lim, Julia Tan and Cheong Kah Yiong – had a field day in two works by American composers. David T. Little’s Haunt of Last Nightfall memorialised the 1981 massacre of innocents during the El Salvador civil war. Pitched (marimbas and metallophones) and unpitched (drums) percussion with the aid of electronics painted a harrowing scenario which traversed from serenity to violence, climaxing with the simulation of gunshots and machine-gun fire.

 

By contrast, four movements from Philip Glass’ Aguas De Amazonia (Waters of the Amazon), adapted for percussion from piano pieces, provided soothing balm to the ears. The novel use of slung cow-bells, crotales, wine bottles, water-filled glasses and bowls conjured an ethereal and other-worldly sonority and feel, suggesting that a reconciliation with Mother Nature be the best salve for the world’s ills.   

Trio of Li Churen, Yang Shuxiang and Leslie Tan
at the Poland Constitution Day concert.

 

Alone Together saw solos, duos and a trio from the newly formed trio of pianist Li Churen, violinist Yang Shuxiang and cellist Leslie Tan. The music of Poland prominently in various degrees of carthasis works by Penderecki, Wieniawski and Panufnik. Li’s original solo compositions included improvisations on Schumann, Mozart and Chopin and were strong on nostalgia. 

The concert’s most poignant moments came in the Intermezzo from Francis Poulenc’s Sonata For Violin and Piano, composed in memory of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered during the Spanish Civil War. The trio’s encore, Piazzolla’s melancolic slow tango Oblivion, showed that music - in all its infinite variety - had the power to heal.