Tsung Yeh (USA/Singapore)

Music Director to the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) since 2002, Tsung Yeh holds a unique historical position as the first conductor ever to hold music directorships of both Chinese instrument and western symphony orchestras. Born in Shanghai, the artist studied conducting under many prolific figures of Chinese and western classical music. Some of them include Han Zhong Jie, Huang Yi Jun, Cao Peng, Sidney Hearth at Mannes College of Music, Otto-Werner Mueller at Yale University, Max Rudolf, Leonard Slatkin, and Murry Sidlin.

Since his first appointment as Resident Conductor at the Florida Orchestra in 1987, he has led highly acclaimed appearances as seen with the Ensemble 2e2m in Paris, Ensemble de Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Hua Xia Ensemble in Beijing, where he is currently Principal Conductor. In 2001, Yeh conducted the Paris-Shanghai Duplex Concert—a collaborative effort between the French National Symphony Orchestra and Shanghai Broadcasting Orchestra. His previous engagements include San Francisco, Tucson and New Haven Symphonies, Calgary and Rochester Philharmonic, and orchestras from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Taipei, Taichung, Japan, France, Poland, Russia and Czech Republic.

Under his baton, the SCO made history by becoming the first Chinese orchestra to perform in the opening week of the Edinburgh Festival. In his decade there, Yeh has steered the orchestra towards a distinctive genre-bending blend of east and west, and of the traditional and the contemporary. Part of their repertoire, Awakening was a fusion of Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu's plays.

With a growing reputation in the conducting teaching field, he holds classes around the world, at the Symphonic Workshop Ltd in Czech Republic; the Conductors' Guild Workshops in Chicago and Indianapolis; and the Musik Hochschule in Zurich Switzerland.

Yeh is also the Music Director of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra in the United States and is one of the founders of the Shanghai New Ensemble.
 

Read our Exclusive Q&A with Tsung Yeh!

IN CONVERSATION WITH Tsung Yeh (USA/Singapore)
Innovation and Reformation – My Answer for the Future of SCO
Moderated by Corrie Tan
For the past ten years, Tsung Yeh has led the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, and has been lauded for the expansion of its scope and reach through innovative ideas. In this talk, Yeh will share his views on how to take SCO into the future. Key to this is the continual re-invention and reformation of the orchestra. It must evolve with the times. To this end, Yeh has made bold moves in SCO's programming and repertoire that integrated other musical genres, styles and performing art forms. At the same time, Yeh is a champion of maintaining SCO's Southeast Asian heritage as a mark of its unique identity. The talk will include musical demonstrations and video clips.
31 May 2012, Thu, 4pm (1hr 30mins)
Esplanade Recital Studio