Fourth-year student, Emily Koh
Third-year student, Thatchatham Silsupan
Two composition students of A/P Ho Chee Kong, Emily Koh (Singapore) and Thatchatham Silsupan (Thailand), have been selected to represent their own countries for the Young Composers Award Competition by the Asian Composers League at the 2009 Asian-Pacific Contemporary Music Festival in Tongyeong and Seoul from 27 March to 2 April 2009.
Emily's selected composition, III. als Leben, is the third out of four independent works based on her personal extensions of the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer in his central work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation). Scored for 12 individual and non-doubling instruments, III. als Leben celebrates life as a consequent of nature, and not vice versa, as commonly believed. It was the first work composed during her semester exchange at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Spring 2007. It was specially written for the inaugural concert of the Conservatory New Music Ensemble – Modern iCONS, at the Esplanade Spectrum New Music Series in November 2007 under the baton of Chan Tze Law. The Straits Times reviewed that the piece "…yielded full yet transparent textures from the small ensemble… sound was piquant to the senses yet serenely pleasing… mastery of form and forces."
A young composer of contemporary classical music, Emily's interest in music composition is currently directed at the confluence of the different styles of music in a multi-dimensional space-time, focusing on timbral explorations. Most recently, she was one of ten composers selected in an international call to participate in the Sentieri Selvaggi Composition Masterclass with Ivan Fedele in Milan, Italy. Last summer, Emily was awarded a scholarship to attend Ensemble TIMF Academy in Bangkok, Thailand, where she studied composition with Gerhard Muller-Hornbach and Unsuk Chin. Emily also attended the 19th Takefu International Music Festival in Japan, where she studied with Toshio Hosokawa, Hiroyuki Itoh and Hitomi Taneko. Recent and upcoming events include premieres of two commissioned works by the NUS Symphony Orchestra and the NUS Guitar Ensemble at the NUS Arts Festival 2009 (March 2009), the premiere of a choral piece by the Conservatory Chamber Singers (April 2009) and premieres of commissions from the Arts Sphere Chamber Ensemble (June 2009) and the Pipa Society of Singapore (August 2009).
Thatchatham's Transitory Study I is a six-minute piece written for clarinet, violin, cello and piano. It is based on the exploration of the relationship between sound, noise and silence. Emphasizing on transformed objects, his interest in the change of a sound color to another, extended to another sound colour perspective, which is noise. Through this exploration, he deliberately tries to achieve various musical aspects by creating organic growth of exposed musical gestures, giving it an approximately constant and inconstant momentum. Also there is an instantly recognisable but non-continuing musical appearance. The piece’s idea also comes from one of Buddhist’s doctrine, which is the non-existence of any object, which itself is never permanent and keeps transforming circularly under the imperfect condition of nature.
Despite not having any classical music background, Thatchatham decided to become a composer after hearing Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, during his pre-college studies at the College of Music at Mahidol University in Bangkok. After graduating with the Best Student Award, he has been participating actively in the local and regional contemporary music scene. In 2006, he was the youngest recipient for the Young Thai Artist Award and appeared on the Music Journal Magazine, Bangkok. In the same year, he joined the 3rd Thailand Composition Festival and collaborated with Eon Trio to bring new music to his hometown, Chiang Mai. In 2007, he was awarded a scholarship to attend Ensemble TIMF Academy in Bangkok, where he was mentored privately by Gerhard Müller-Hornbach and Unsuk Chin. Recently, he was selected to present his work in a masterclass with Christopher Theofanidis at the Peabody Institute when he was there for an exchange last semester. His recent compositions express his musical influences from Indie Rock and Pop when he was a youth, and the extended and non-standard instrumental/compositional techniques while being aware of his long-time education in Buddhist philosophy.