Young Musician of the Year 2023

Term 2 has seen the third year of our ‘Young Musician of the Year’ competition with an exciting new category, composing music, to inspire our students and an extension of our performing competition to Years 5 and 6.

The soloist competition now include Years 5 and 6 extending the competition to our Primary Campus with a ‘Primary Young Musician’ for the first time this year. Along with Years 7-9 and Years 10-13, there will be a winner for each section. The top five performers from each section will be judged by an external judge, Cheryl Mah who will decide on our winners for 2023.

Our performance judge, Ms Cheryl Mah is an active music educator. Gaining her degree from Elder Conservatorium of Music (Australia) with concurrent majors in Piano Performance and Music Education, Cheryl completed Performance-based Master Degree in Conducting and Directorship from Salford University (UK). She conducts at UCSI University Orchestra (Malaysia) in regular concert performances, and has been the creative director and resident conductor of the award-winning ensemble Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (klpac) Symphonic Band since 2011. 

The new category of composing music was included to inspire students who enjoy composing music and this has certainly encouraged students to be creative in a different genre of music. Our judge, Hoong Bee Lim obtained her Film Scoring degree from Berklee College of Music and upon the completion of her studies, she moved to Los Angeles, California and assisted Mr. Lawrence Shragge, a film composer for the Hallmark Entertainment, ESPN Original Entertainment, and the USA Channel.

The competition has remained an online event as this enables more students to be involved. There has been a lot of excitement about the competition this year especially at Key Stage 4 with students spending a lot of time with their instrumental teachers choosing the perfect piece.  The results were announced at EP in our Creative and Expressive Arts After Party and at JB in their Friday Key Stage 2 assembly. 

Our Performing Winners

Our primary winner is Austen who performed Chopin Nocturne in C on the piano, our junior winner is Yihan performing Snow, Moon and Flowers by P. Sculthorpe again on the piano and Prudence in Year 10 being our Senior winner who performed Toccata in A Minor by Berkovich on the Piano. 

Our Young Composer Winner

Our composer winner is Kieran in Year 11 who composed a piece named Background Feelings.

We are extremely proud of all of our performers and hope they will look forward to next year's competition.