Shanghai-born Yeh Tsung is the music director of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, which, under his helm since 2002, has gone on to take part in frontier-crossing interdisciplinary performance projects in music, theatre, visual arts and new media. Although trained in the Western symphonic tradition and first as a pianist, Yeh has studied with leading Chinese names including Cao Peng and Huang Yijun. Currently also the conductor of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra in the United States, Yeh has worked with numerous international institutions including the San Francisco Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Symphony, the Radio France Philharmonic, Ensemble 2e2m, and the Huaxia Ensemble in Beijing. In 2013, he received the Cultural Medallion for his contributions to music in Singapore.

Born in Shanghai, China in 1950, Yeh Tsung was encouraged to study music at the age of five by his mother, a vocal professor. He began learning the piano from her and initially found his lessons boring. But later on when Yeh started to accompany his mother’s vocal students on the piano, he was captivated by the melodies he played and began to fall in love with the instrument.

When Yeh was 10 years old, he enrolled in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music elementary school division, and moved on to the middle school division. In 1966, after six years of music study, the Cultural Revolution in China began. This put a temporary stop to Yeh’s formal music education in Shanghai, and marked the start of a harrowing decade for Yeh and his family.

Deprived of any musical experiences from the world outside China, Yeh continued to play the piano on his own during the Cultural Revolution, practising in secret behind drawn curtains and secretly going to his professor’s home for lessons. Eventually, these clandestine musical endeavours ended as Yeh’s parents were accused of being spies and the Yeh family home was searched, and Yeh was sent to a rural village in Anhui to work as a peasant for a year.

After the Cultural Revolution ended, Yeh was filled with a new resolve to not lose any more time for music, and re-enrolled himself in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music again to study piano in earnest. As a student, besides his classical practices, Yeh would also travel to listen to folk music of mountain villages, appreciating all the music he could discover. He also attended performances by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony in China—unheard of events during the Cultural Revolution—and found himself so moved by what he experienced that he was in tears. He discovered his passion for orchestral music, and thus began the expansion of his musical vision from that of a pianist into that of an orchestra conductor.

In 1981, Yeh’s talent for music was noticed and he received a full scholarship to study at Mannes College of Music in New York, USA. Yeh moved to USA, and completed his postgraduate studies at Yale University after graduating as valedictorian at the Mannes College of Music. In 1984, he began his professional conducting career with the St. Louis Symphony, and became the resident conductor of the Florida Orchestra in 1987. From then, he went on to work with many international orchestras, including conducting the Albany Symphony Orchestra and the Hua Xia Ensemble in Beijing, China, and music directing the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, with whom he still serves as music director today since 1988.

In 2002, attracted by the innovative possibilities of Chinese orchestral music, Yeh took over the reins of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, becoming the first conductor to hold concurrent music directorship of a Western and Chinese symphony orchestra.

Yeh’s arrival began the charting of a new history for the Singapore Chinese Orchestra that would include significant innovative programmes that brought together distinct musical worlds of classical and contemporary, and of the East and the West. Keenly appreciative of the allure of pop for the majority of music audiences, Yeh also led the orchestra in incorporating pop music in its performances, making Chinese classical music more accessible to casual listeners. In 2005, Yeh brought the orchestra on its first international tour, which included performances in London, UK, and Budapest, Hungary.

Under Yeh’s watch, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra also embarked on interdisciplinary collaborations. These included a visual live-installation with the artist-calligrapher Tan Swie Hian—Instant is a Millenium—as well as a music-theatre partnership with Mo Fan in Cao Yu’s classic play Thunderstorm. Yeh was also instrumental in bringing the orchestra to the Edinburgh International Festival in support of TheatreWorks’ multi-disciplinary production Diaspora.

In 2013, he received the Cultural Medallion for his contributions to music in Singapore.

While he is well-known for his ambitious programming, Yeh is also recognised for his disciplined baton technique and rational approach towards music leadership. He is sought after as an educator and frequently holds conducting workshops around the world. His recent appointments include being Principal Conductor of the Chinese National Traditional Orchestra, senior researcher at the He Luting Chinese Music Research Institute at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, artistic committee member of the Jiangsu Centre for the Performing Arts, and a member of the faculty of the International Conducting Institute in the Czech Republic.

Yeh currently serves as music director of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, professor at the China Conservatory of Music, and guest professor at both the Shanghai and Central Conservatory of Music, with the personal philosophy that one should open up one’s heart to the arts.

Singapore Chinese Orchestra