Singaporean composer
  •  
  •  

Biography

Ji Heng Lee
Singaporean composer Ji Heng Lee began writing and arranging music for his peers in the Guitar ensemble (of which he was Music Director) and other student-run orchestras when he was studying in Raffles Institution (Singapore), where he read Music at the A-Level. Since graduating, he has continued to compose pieces for school juniors, including a Quintet conducted by Peter Veale as part of a collaboration with the Cologne-based Ensemble musikFabrik, as well as a chamber piece, heard that..., performed by a combined (Western and Chinese) string orchestra under Wei Shing Chan. In 2011, Ji Heng received the Singaporean Composer Award for his orchestral piece, Dark Light, in the Singapore International Competition for Chinese Orchestral Composition. His piece was premiered by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra under the direction of Tsung Yeh, and has also been recorded as part of an album featuring winning pieces from the competition.

Ji Heng is presently a postgraduate (Masters) student at the Royal College of Music in London, studying composition with Jonathan Cole. He is a Leverhulme Arts Scholar, supported by donors Ms Jean Cater and Professor Gordon Marshall. Last November, Ji Heng’s pe_ple_sc_ns was played in the Taylor-Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize Exhibition Concert, along with pieces written by other RCM composition students in response to selected portraits. In addition to ongoing collaborations in College, his current projects include a series of solo instrumental pieces exploring extended techniques, an orchestral piece, as well as a string quartet.

Previously, under a teaching scholarship awarded by the Singapore Ministry of Education, Ji Heng read the Music Tripos at University of Cambridge (Girton College), and graduated in June 2017. He has taken composition lessons with teachers including Richard Causton, Jeremy Thurlow and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, and also academic lessons with Martin Ennis, Tim Watts and Gareth Wilson, along with several others. He has been involved in the College’s Chapel Choir and numerous recitals organised by the Music Society. In 2016, he was awarded the Sophia Turle Scholarship and Phyllis Tillyard Prize in recognition of his academic performance. During his time in Cambridge, Ji Heng has written for a diverse range of ensembles. Past projects include a prize-winning Advent carol Maranâ thâ premiered by Ely Consort under Matthew Rudd, a Short Piece for Cambridge University Chinese Orchestra, a setting of a poem The Ocean Breathes for twelve solo voices and three suspended cymbals, as well as Three Movements for Organ dedicated to Lucy Morrell, Senior Organ Scholar at Girton College.

After completing his Masters, Ji Heng will be a school music teacher in Singapore, where he hopes to keep up his composing career alongside his teaching job.

Updated January 2018