työn imu is a Finnish term, meaning “the pull of work” or “the suction of work”. It is often used to depict being in a healthy state of flow, which is a positive state of mind one obtains after attaining emotional and motivational fulfilment at work. However, after watching the film “Soul” in the cinemas, I was hit with the thought that being a state of flow may not necessarily always be a good thing. The film dealt with topics of unhealthy obsession of work to the point where someone may become disconnected from the real world, 
becoming a “lost soul” in the process.

My piece explores the different possibilities of being in a negative state of flow. Written like a drama/story, each instrument plays a very specific role and their characters develop as the piece progresses. All of them have a different role and purpose for being in a state of flow, and they ultimately also have different outcomes due to their disparate personalities.

Many thanks to the performers who made this piece possible: Rui Yang (Flute), Stephanie (Clarinet), Neville (Violin), and Yu Ru (Percussion/Narrator)!

työn imu (2021)

In recent times, I have been going very deeply into thinking about how our perception of nature is so intricately linked to the environment we have grown up in, or been acclimatised to. Having 
been in Europe for a few months, I realised that the nature we have in Singapore is very much confined, organised and made to look “biological”, whereas the nature I experienced in Europe was very much steeped in vastness and serendipity that could no way be categorised. The way I see these disparate states of nature in two very different parts of the world can be contextualised into a figurative canopy that separates them along a very familiar axis – the axis of mankind.

I decided to write this piece after being intrigued and inspired by the rain vortex at the Changi Jewel. I felt that the rain vortex is a perfect representation of this “canopy”. To me, the vortex combines the notion of geometry and futurism with the idea of peace and tranquillity, which is why it never fails to fascinate me every single time. This place also represents many different contrasts coexisting together – the sheer force of the downward vortex contrasting with the almost weightless effervescence of residual mist; the precise symmetry of a man-made behemoth juxtaposed with nature’s serendipitous sprawl.

In my piece, the notion of “Hephaestus” (the Greek god of fire, metalworking, masonry, forges and sculptures) represents mankind and our unrelentless pursuit of industrialised modernity. In the 
beginning of the piece, I choose to focus on individual elements which heavily contrast each other(mechanical nature of the man-made vortex contrasting with the “natural” surroundings). These 
elements slowly come together to form a curated co-existence of nature and man as the piece unfolds, with the elements slowly bleeding into each other to form a homogenous soundscape.

Many thanks to the saxophone maestro Andreas Marinello who made this piece come to life!

hephaestical canopy (2020)

I am sure some of you have heard the saying - “ohana means family; family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten”. That is a saying I truly believe and resonate with. Family should never be taken for granted and can never be replaced as well.

Living with my “yeye” (grandpa) however, I have come to realise that dementia patients do not have a say in choosing to remember or keep their loved ones close. During the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, I was unable to be out and about, but it was truly nice to spend more time at home with my aging grandparents. At the same time, it was also heart-breaking and quite distressing to see how dementia has been slowly yet steadily chipping away at the memories and sentience of my yeye.

anaho is a palindromic catastrophe - an attempt at depicting life through the lens of a dementia patient who may experience a non-linear, warped sense of time as he lives in a perpetual loop of questions which he will never get the answers to. Out of this comes an inevitable sense of confusion and frustration, but also moments where he recalls snippets of life that bring back a sense of familiarity and warmth. The motifs in the piece struggle to progress past a certain point, and at many instances collide with one another – like the memories of the past and present coexisting in an ever-infinite loop.

I would like to express my utmost gratitude to my amazing friend, Maestro Kai Jie who put in so much time and effort to rehearse this piece and conduct it during its premiere. Also many thanks to all the performers who made this premiere a whopping success: Viktorya (Flute), Hyesoo (Cor Anglais), Stephanie (Clarinet), Stamp (Trumpet), Jaben (French Horn), Danilo (Trombone), Elizabeth (Piano), Nigel (Harp), Yu Ru (Percussion), Neville (Violin 1), Elicia (Violin 2), Danish (Viola), Yunbei (Cello), and Gege (Double Bass)!

anaho (2020/21)

An improvisation I did today on the piano! many many wrong sounding weird stuff though :/ credits to Ning Yuan for helping to set up the recording equipment!!

Piano improvisation!

Another tab I did with the Tuxguitar programme, trying to be as accurate as possible with the ear! This is an awesome song IMO so please enjoy and I hope this is accurate enough for a tab hahaha

Radiohead - Creep (MIDI Rendition)

Oasis - Supersonic (MIDI Rendition)

Another Tuxguitar cover!

Just in case I get reported again:
THIS SONG DOES NOT BELONG TO ME
COPYRIGHT PARAMORE
FUELED BY RAMEN

Paramore - Playing God (MIDI Rendition)

Celebrations Of A Colourful Memory

"A Painfully Uncomfortable Conversation In An Extremely Comfortable Setting" for prepared string quartet, is a work that explores unconventional methods of conceiving and playing string quartet pieces. Some of the sounds present in the work are made by homemade bows and having objects such as Styrofoam balls and paperclips attached to the strings itself to enhance the sound of the strings. This work is meant to represent a conversation about technology - it starts out with everyone being calm and relaxed but it escalates into a heated and violent argument. While composing this piece, I was also thinking about how concert halls usually play "beautiful and refined" music, but how does one quantify what is "beautiful and refined"? This piece is an attempt to push the boundaries of conventional music and compose something that is not appealing in the classical sense but in other unconventional ways.

Many thanks to Neville (Violin I), Danish (Viola), Eriko (Violin II) and Yunbei (Cello) - my friends from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory who premiered this piece!

A Painfully Uncomfortable Conversation In An Extremely Comfortable Setting (2018)

Silence is most often associated with the absence of sound. Pieces like Cage’s 4’33” come to mind when we talk about the exploration of silence as the emancipation of sonic restrictions (even though Cage himself has already established that there is no absolute silence). 

In my piece, “silence… is virtue” for violin and tenor saxophone, I explore the alternative concept of silence – losing one’s voice through censorship and conformity.
At the start, the two instruments interact and display their own virtuosity, but still complement each other with the aim of maintaining harmony. Slowly, external forces slowly strip the music of individuality and creativity, until only the consciousness of the soul is left to conform to a regimentally-induced state of being. The ultimate result is a unification of the entire homogenous body into a singular train of thought. Notions of propaganda and censorship are essential tools to achieve this goal, and musical gestures which represent those actions are scattered throughout the piece.

This piece does not seek to attack any philosophy, but to demonstrate the act of general censorship and show the dichotomy between reality and theory when such practices are being put to use in real life. 

silence is virtue was premiered by Geoffrey Landman of the Landman/Stadler Duo (Tenor Saxophone) and Shi Mei of the Wu Xian Ensemble (Violin)during the Sounding Now Festival 2019 held at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. Many thanks to them!

"silence... is virtue" (2018)

While You Sleep… for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, cello and piano, is a work that describes my experiences of a chronic phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. For a person afflicted with sleep paralysis, he or she is awake and fully aware of the surroundings but unable to move or speak, often resulting in immense fear and helplessness. During an episode of sleep paralysis, a person usually hallucinates – he hears, feels, and sees things that are not present. For myself, these episodes have become a common occurrence and one instance of sleep paralysis usually occurs in multiple episodes, with each episode ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes.

In this piece, I form a narrative of thoughts with my music, using gestures to depict different events occurring during an instance of sleep paralysis, from the moment I wake up to the moment I break out of the paralysis. For the whole of the first section, the harmony remains somewhat static, to portray a state of physical inactivity. To create movement amidst this static harmony, the notes in the woodwinds are continually moved around, eventually reharmonizing the chord into an inversion by the time the section is over. I also had different intensities and speeds of vibrato across the wind and string instruments to create texture. Towards the end of the section, I also introduced other frequencies that were not part of the original harmonic series, to create a trajectory towards the next section.

In the second section of the piece, the music becomes more dynamic. There is interaction between the wind and strings instruments and the piano which depicts the physical resistance towards the feeling of a “ghost on the body” during episodes of paralysis. This is interspersed with the winds playing loud, long held notes to represent a person still aware that he/she is being locked in the paralysis despite efforts to fight it. In terms of harmony, the piece has is slowly shifting to inharmonicity as it harnesses a greater frequency of notes outside of the original overtone spectrum. This gives listeners a feeling that chaos is brewing and this eventually leads to a breakout in the third section when there is the first gesture of a perpetual motion throughout the piece. This is a representation of the full manifestation of the paralysis – rhythmic layering of instrumental lines over the ferocious piano chords which again stay harmonically static to represent the tension associated with the physical feeling of being tied down. The piece ends with a similar gesture to the start, but the “phantom chords” which emerge from the resonance of the piano represent a slow but definite awakening out of the paralysis – an awakening that is not abrupt but eventual as the body gives in and accepts its situation.

While You Sleep... was premiered by the Ensemble Phoenix Basel at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

While You Sleep... (2018)

As I sit in my room looking out at the hazy sky with the blinds half-drawn, I could not help but get thrown into a series of self-deprecating thoughts. "Am I good enough?" "Do I deserve to be here?" "I wish I was better at... "

This piece reflects my state of quasi-catatonic daydreaming, drifting between states of tranquility and other thoughts - the "what ifs" and "why nots "  that make their way into my head as I lie on my bed, looking outside of the window at the gloominess.

Prelude to the Afternoon of Rain and Haze (2019)

"只剩下钢琴陪我谈了一天
睡着的大提琴 安静的旧旧的..."

In this piece,  I draw inspiration from mandopop songs I listened to while growing up. (Mandopop is a colloquial term for Mandarin pop music). This whimsical piece is embedded with a plethora of gestures which are derived from actual Mandopop songs, albeit heavily altered in terms of harmony and melodic contour to fit the style of the piece. The title is actually translated from one of my favourite phrases of lyrics from a childhood song that I still love very much today.

This piece was written from a retrospective viewpoint – I imagine the character in the piece (which is myself) to be thinking back on my childhood but being only able to remember certain phrases from childhood songs, certain lyrics, certain characteristics… sometimes even overlapping with one another. Frustrated, the character tries to paint a piece of music using these fragments and when the memory lapses, he attempts to dig deeper into his brain to find the particular melody he had been searching for.

I decided to depict moments of “speaking” and moments of “sleeping in the piece”, denoted by various sections of extreme dynamism juxtaposed with segments of stativity. In the static parts, the winds’ multiphonics play a crucial role in expanding the sonorities vertically, along with the piano playing muffled notes inside of the piano. Combined, these gestures create a sense of ambiguity which is really meant to represent my state of helplessness as I am trying to grasp for compositional ideas, digging deep into my already dried up brain wells.

speaking piano, sleeping cello was premiered on 9th October 2019 at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory by my very lovable (and quirky) friends - Elizabeth (piano), Stephanie (clarinet) and Rui Yang (flute).

speaking piano, sleeping cello (2019)

The term “shell-shock” was coined after World War I to describe the psychological reaction of soldiers towards violence and fighting, a condition which we now know as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In today’s world, PTSD is a loosely used term by the general masses who don't really understand the condition. During a recent trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina, I met an individual who actually had PTSD and it was apparent in his behaviour. The look of constant trepidation on his face, the way he described his experiences as a “constant nightmare”, the way his entire being seemed to be covered by an imaginary shadow that constantly loomed behind him – these are images that still remain in my head till today.

This piece is an attempt at portraying what a PTSD-inflicted individual may have to go through on a daily basis. Some aspects of the condition which I attempt to portray include getting triggered by certain sounds, dissociation from reality, feelings of unexplained panic and non-chronological flashback of discrete memories. The piece moves through a tumultuous journey characterised by sudden juxtaposition and prolonged tension; yet it ends on a hopeful note as the tension resolves with more resonance and less dissonance.

This piece was premiered on 23rd October 2019 by the Trio Khaldei from Belgium, at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. Sincerest thanks to Pieter, Francis and Barbara who really took the utmost effort in preparing and presenting my piece to its fullest potential!

a shell-shocked monologue amidst a sea of ignorance (2019)

Kong Tze Shiuan is a composer from Singapore, who has most recently attained his Bachelor's in Music (Composition) from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore. Being exposed to many different compositional styles and techniques during his time in the conservatory, Tze Shiuan is open to all styles and tries to be versatile in his music, drawing inspiration from his everyday life, memories which speak a lot to him and personal events that affect the way he thinks and live. 

Tze Shiuan is also a music educator, and his firm belief is that his music should educate and enlighten listeners on how abstract music can be easily understood as long as there is clear context. Besides composing, Tze Shiuan is also a pianist and a casual guitarist. He enjoys listening to all sorts of music genres in his spare time, and he occasionally incorporates a fusion of classical and non-classical styles in his compositions.

tzeshiuan

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