Leong Yoon Pin is a pioneering Singapore classical musician who is regarded as the "Father of Singaporean Composers". He was a conductor who founded and led some of Singapore's pioneer choral groups from the '50s, and an educator who nurtured a generation of students with unstinting generosity. He was also a composer who possessed a quintessentially Singaporean voice, integrating evocative soundscapes of Singapore in his symphonic compositions, tone poems and choral works. In 1982, he received the Cultural Medallion for his contributions to music in Singapore. He also received the Bintang Bakti Masyarakt (Public Service Star) in 2005 and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore in 2007.

Born in 1931 in Singapore, Leong Yoon Pin grew up the third of seven children. He attended a few primary schools and two secondary schools, receiving a mixed English and Chinese education in the process. After the Japanese Occupation, his father, a radio dealer, became a hi-fi enthusiast and played a lot of Western classical music on his sound system at home. A teenage Leong, who had become a lover of Chinese literature and Rediffusion’s Chinese radio dramas, grew to love music as well and taught himself to play the piano while an uncle taught him to play the violin.

It was not until his 20s after he had enrolled in the Teachers' Training College that he started taking formal music lessons at the college while singing in the Singapore Music Society Choir and the Chamber Ensemble Choir. After he graduated in 1953, he taught music and other subjects as a primary school teacher for a spell, and founded the Rediffusion Youth Choir and served as its conductor. Leong also composed his first choral piece Story of Mulan that year.

In 1955, he was awarded a scholarship to the UK to study music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, graduating in 1958 with majors in composition, piano and voice and became a specialist teacher in music for the next few years. In 1959, Leong became a music lecturer at the Teachers' Training College in Singapore and founded the Metro Philharmonic Society. For this and other vocal groups, he composed several choral works so that they could sing locally written songs. Outside of his music career, Leong wrote regularly under the pen name of Xue Xi Ting for Chinese daily Nanyang Siang Pau.

In 1967, he left Singapore again, this time to study music composition with the famed French composer Nadia Boulanger in Paris for a year. After his return, he was appointed as the resident conductor of the National Theatre Orchestra in 1969 and became the head of the music department at the Institute of Education (formerly Teachers' Training College) in 1971. In 1975, he left again for post-graduate studies in music education at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne on a British Council Commonwealth Fellowship. Once back in Singapore, he served as the resident conductor of the Singapore National Orchestra from 1977 to 1979.

During this period, Leong became known for his generosity in sharing his knowledge and his support for his scores of music students in both his professional and private music lessons. Among the musicians he mentored were future Cultural Medallion recipients and composers Lim Yau and Phoon Yew Tien, and choral musician Jennifer Tham.

From the 1950s to the 2000s, he created a diverse body of works. His creations included two symphonies, a concert overture, a piano concerto, a few symphonic tone poems, an opera, many instrumental pieces and numerous choral works. Several were locally commissioned and had a nationalist slant, and many were Leong's own creative results and personal reactions to Singapore’s socio-political climate.

While his studies with Boulanger in Paris had encouraged his use of Singapore ethnic musical elements, Leong had always been a humanist with a strong sense of social consciousness. He revered Singapore's ethnic folksongs, loved Chinese literature, and deeply appreciated his multicultural environment. He sought to express the soundscape and rich, diverse character of Singapore through the times, integrating the labouring chants of Indian workers, the calls of street hawkers, Malay folksongs, classical Chinese poems, Malay pantun (poetry), Chinese opera and other local elements in his music.

His 1980 concert overture Dayong Sampan, based on a popular Malay folksong, became one of the most widely played orchestral pieces in Singapore. His late '70s symphonies—Symphony No. 1 and No. 2—featuring Indian labourers' chants and Chinese poetry received rave reviews for possessing a truly Singaporean voice. Singapore's first Western opera Bunga Mawar (The Rose) featured his original score set to Malay pantun, and the choral work Sunset, commissioned for the Singapore Youth Festival in 2005, combined elements of the gamelan, the Chinese pipa and Indian harmonies.

Over the decades, Leong also assumed other important roles in Singapore's classical music scene. He served as chairman of the Singapore Composers' Circle, arts advisory panel member of the National Arts Council, and artistic consultant to the Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, The Substation and the Practice Performing Arts School. He also served as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s first ever composer-in-residence in 2001.

For his significant achievements in Singapore music, Leong received the Bintang Bakti Masyarakat (Public Service Star) in 2005 and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore in 2007. In 1982, he received the Cultural Medallion for his contributions to music in Singapore.

In April 2011, Leong passed away in Singapore at the age of 79. His legacy lives on in the generation of musicians he nurtured during his life and in the Leong Yoon Pin Music Fund, which was established with a $500,000 donation by Leong’s family towards the development of music education at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. His original music manuscripts were also donated to the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory at the National University of Singapore. Leong's collection of music books and personal artifacts has also been archived at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts’ library for music education and research.