On a Different Note

The SYC Ensemble Singers has an active commissioning programme. Fiercely committed to promoting the music of its time and place, the choir has been heralded as the ‘Sound of New Asia’, and for good reason.

Over the last two decades, more than 30 works have been commissioned by or written for the SYC, and premiered both in Singapore and abroad. The majority of these works were composed by Asian composers—Hoh Chung Shih, Phoon Yew Tien, Chen Yi, and Leong Yoon Pin are some of the names represented in the permanent repertoire of the SYC Ensemble Singers. For their 40th anniversary celebrations in 2004, the choir invited as many as ten composers to write for them, out of whom four were Singaporean.