Chow Jun Yan

Chow Jun Yan (Malaysia, b. 1984) started his composition studies with Mr. Yii Kah Hoe. He graduated with First Class Honours in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (YSTCM), Singapore and was studying under Professor Ho Chee Kong, Head of Composition Faculty and Computer Music under Professor Steven Miller. Jun Yan won the 2nd Prize for the Malaysia Modern Poem Composition Competition 2015, Winner of Society of Malaysia Contemporary Composer’s “Call for Score – Organ solo” 2013, and the 3rd Prize for the category B in the Singapore International Competition for Chinese Music Composition 2012. Besides that he was also acclaimed as one of the finalists in the Eighth Thailand International Composer Festival (2012), Young Composer in Southeast Asia Competition and Festival 2011, Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival (KLCMF) 2009 and Malaysia’s inaugural HSBC Classics Festival Young Composer Workshop 2008. Furthermore, he had his student exchange program in Peobody Conservatory of Music, where he studied under Dr. Oscar Bettison and attended master classes with Chaya Czernowin, Liza Lim, Hans Thomalla, Mark Andre, Manos Tsangaris and Yuval Shaked. Jun Yan has also attended private composition lessons with Mr. Chong Kee Yong in the past few years.

Besides that, Jun Yan started to explore in computer music since 2010 by his first live electronic piece collaborate with Erhu improvisation which premiered in Peabody Conservatory of Music. He continued to explore in electronic music and composed “Abstraction”, an improvisation piece without music notation score with live processing via MaxMSP on 8 channels sound system and S-Box 4, 4 handmade electronic circuits with 8 channels sound system at year 2011. Furthermore, he has organised his senior recital with a 50 minutes piece, Back to Nature, a piece with live improvisation with live processing. The instruments that have been used including flute, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion, violin, cello and double bass.

For the past few years, he extended his art exploration into interdisciplinary art where he composed “Strolling” for flute, percussion and Chinese calligraphy in year 2013, followed by organizing “Hearing Visual Looking Sound”, sound-visual improvisation performance in year December 2015 in Malaysia, and June 2016 in Thailand, and as well as participated in SETTS #3 performance in Singapore on May, 2016 by inviting musician and visual artist to have live collaboration within their native discipline.

Jun Yan completed his PhD studies in year 2018 in National University of Singapore under Professor Lonce Wyse, with the title of Communication Between Sound and Visual Artists in Improvisatory Performance. At the same time, he is presently under the personal tutelage of renowned Erhu musician Mr. Zhang Yu Ming and has participated as an erhu improviser in various concerts, including Hearing Visual Looking Sound (Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok), UITM Spectra 2016 (Kuala Lumpur), The 3rd RSU Electronic Music Concert: Melt (Rangsit University, Bangkok) and RAW Art Space (Kuala Lumpur).

He is currently an Artist Fellow at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore.