Fourth-year student, Xu Jueyi
Graduate Diploma student, Ye Lin
Over the last few years, students from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music have had numerous opportunities to rehearse and perform with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO), working with internationally renowned conductors and soloists. These freelance opportunities have proven to be a great success with the students.
Two violin majors have landed themselves jobs as full-time SSO musicians and will embark on their orchestral careers with the SSO when they complete their student days this semester. Fourth-year student Xu Jueyi takes up the position of second violin this end of April while Graduate Diploma Ye Lin assumes her post in August.
Before coming to Singapore, Jueyi studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and had consistently received scholarships for being among the top students in her class. She plays on a c.1810 L. Ventapane violin from the Rin Collection and is an active performer in Conservatory events and participant in international musical festivals and competitions. In 2005, Jueyi won second prize in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concerto Competition and was appointed concertmaster of the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra in concerts conducted by Riccardo Muti in Tokyo and Sapporo last July.
Ye Lin’s achievements include clinching the top prize in Singapore’s National Piano & Violin Competition 2005 (open category), as well as being a prizewinner in the Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Lublin, 2003, and the China National Violin Competition in 1998. She also came in tops at the Yong Siew Toh s inaugural Conservatory Concerto Competition in 2004. Besides her teachers at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, Ye Lin also cites Herbert Greenberg, a member of the violin faculty at the Peabody Institute, whose teachings on orchestral excerpts left a deep impression on her when she was on exchange at Peabody in September 2006. A National Arts Council-Conservatory music scholar in her undergraduate years, Ye Lin graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in July 2007 before commencing studies on the Graduate Diploma programme. She plays on a 1769 M. Deconet violin generously on loan from Mr and Mrs Rin Kei Mei.