Over the past few years, Jennifer Tham has continued to reimagine what a choir can be. She sees it as a space for collaboration and collective listening. With the SYC Ensemble Singers, she champions new music, invites audiences into the creative process, and offers emerging composers and singers the opportunity to experiment without fear of failure.
Since we first featured you in 2024, how has your approach to arts leadership changed?
Earlier in my conducting life, I thought leadership meant being able to fix problems or having the right answers. Today, it begins with asking smarter, more intuitive questions, like “What happens if rehearsals become places of discovery rather than preparation?”
This has led to projects like Living Music, which creates a safe space for composers to experiment, and Living Music (Singer’s Edition), which invites the public into our rehearsal process. They’ve also shaped our work as the lab choir for the Young Composers Forum, where we’ve helped emerging composers develop and premiere new works.
How can you keep choral music relevant and meaningful in a rapidly changing society?
Singing together will always be important because it teaches us to listen. More interesting is how we can listen more deeply and intentionally.
One example is the body electric (2025), a part of the SYC’s 60th anniversary project. This piece was co-created by the choir members and composers Americ Goh and Diana Soh, as well as me, and combined poetry, music, theatre, lighting design, and audience participation.
Audience members sent us text messages describing their favourite sounds, which we recorded and transformed into a soundscape. In doing so, we explored the relationship between performers and audiences, recognising that the audience completes the circle of performance.
what changes in expectations among audiences and young musicians do you observe, and how have these influenced your work?
I think both audiences and musicians today are hungry for human connection and purpose—things that can’t be found or streamed online.
While my work with SYC has always been about curating experiences, whether concerts themed around grief, different takes on what it means to love, or choral theatre pieces exploring the curious acoustics of the Esplanade Recital Studio; I’ve become increasingly obsessed with the dramaturgy of performance.
How would you like the next generation to experience and engage with the arts differently from today?
I’d love for young people to feel that the arts belong to them. Not because they already have something important to say, but because they’re willing to ask interesting questions.
I hope they’ll feel free to compose before they’re certain they’re composers, to sing before they think they’re singers, to experiment, to collaborate across disciplines, and to remain curious about people whose experiences are different from their own.
What kind of Singapore do you want to build, and how can the arts help us get there?
I hope we can build a Singapore that asks generous questions of itself. What if we imagined differently? When we value attention as much as achievement, what kind of society will we become? The arts provide us with spaces to practise habits of mind. The choir is a wonderful metaphor for society. Every singer has a unique voice, but no one can make the music alone. It is almost more important to listen than to sing.
Photography Mun Kong
Art direction Ed Harland
Hair Sveta Klyn/The Suburbs Studio, using Goldwell
Makeup Keith Bryant Lee, using Laura Mercier
Photography assistant Hizaun Zailani
