David has been a full-time programmer at The Esplanade Co Ltd since 2015. As a programmer, David has been part of various festivals such as Kalaa Utsavam – Indian Festival of Arts, Flipside, free programmes such as Red Dot August, and has also had the privilege of working on the 2016 and 2017 editions of the Marina Bay Singapore Countdown (MBSC) project with external stakeholders. He has also been a part of Coffee Morning & Afternoon Tea, a music programme specially curated for the seniors. He is currently a part of the Indian programming team straddling between theatre for Indian audiences and Indian contemporary music. He conceptualised the Fusion Beats Mentorship programme, which helps to groom local Indian indie musicians and has curated and produced theatre productions for Kalaa Utsavam.

Prior to working at Esplanade, David had a television broadcast background, having served as a Commissioning-Editor for Vasantham, Mediacorp, for over six years.  

Shabir is one of the most esteemed flag-bearers of Tamil music in Singapore. The inaugural winner of Mediacorp’s Vasantham Star in 2005, Shabir has since matured into a multiple award-winning singer-songwriter, music producer and performer. In 2020, he was the resident judge of Yaar Antha Star, a singing contest to unearth the nation’s best young singing talents. Shabir is the first artist of Tamil and Indian descent to be conferred the Singapore Youth Award, the highest national honour given to young achievers by the Singapore Government. In 2019, Shabir achieved mainstream success in India as a composer, songwriter and singer in the highly competitive Indian film music industry, with Yaayum crossing 105 million collective views on YouTube.

Mohamed Raffee has been active in Singapore, Malaysia and India’s music industries for over 35 years. His repertoire ranges from Indian ghazals to Western classical, jazz, pop, rock and blues music. A multi-instrumentalist proficient in both Western and traditional Indian instruments, he rearranged and produced the Tamil song Munneru Vaaliba for the 1998 National Day celebrations. Raffee has also scored theatre productions such as The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole for Singapore theatre group Agnikoothu and films such as Gurushetram–24 Hours of Anger (2010), as well as Kollywood hit director Ravikumar’s Jaggubhai (2010). Raffee also worked closely with acclaimed Indian film music director A. R. Rahman from 1995 to 2007 while collaborating with other composers as arranger, keyboard programmer and instrumentalist. Raffee has released four albums of original music with his band The Vasantham Boyz, and he continues to perform regularly with them.

V. Suriamurthi first started singing Tamil songs on the radio programme Maanavar Medai (Students’ Stage) in 1975, and graduated to singing on television in 1976 on a Deepavali variety show. He sang in stage shows and wedding functions with live music band groups like Febra Music Party, Vasantham Band, Vinnoli Music Band, Marumalarachi Band, to name a few. In 1982, Suriamurthi represented Singapore in an exchange programme with Malaysia. In the same year, he appeared in the National Day programme staged at the City Hall, and has since been a regular singer on national celebratory programmes. In 1985, he won the first prize in a talentime where the chief judge was the renowned Indian music director Gangai Amaran. Besides singing, Suriamurthi intends to do sound engineering to enrich his skills and to also share his experience with budding singers.