Joyce Beetuan Koh

Career

Koh studied composition at King's College London under the tutorship of David Lumsdaine, and at University of York with Nicola Lefanu, receiving a PhD in Composition in 1997. She received the Nadia Boulanger scholarship and studied in Paris with Brian Ferneyhough at Royaumont in 1995, Tristan Murail in 1996, and at IRCAM Cursus in Music Computing 1997-98 with Hans Tutschku and Mikhail Malt. . Koh was a composer-in-residence at the Herrenhaus Edenkoben in 2004. In 2007, Koh become a founding faculty member of the music department of School of the arts, Singapore, and then became Vice-Dean (interdisciplinary studies) at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2010. Koh is a founding member of the Composers' Society of Singapore and served as its President 2013-16.

Honours

• Koh received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council, Singapore, in the category for music, for her orchestra works TAI, commissioned by Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Creative work

Collaborations

Koh’s music has been performed by BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hungarian Radio Budapest Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Résonance Contemporaine, The Song Company of Australia, Nieuw Ensemble, Take 5, and Reconsil, as well as by soloists including [Prodromos Symeonidis]], Frode Haltli, and Thalia Myers. Her compositions for dance include a series of works with The Arts Fission Company, for example ‘In the Name of Red’ (2015), a site-specific work for the inauguration festival of the National Gallery Singapore). Leaning on her concept of multimedia performance as a "theatre of music", Koh created Away We Go (2015) together with Étienne Turpin, commissioned by NTU Centre of Contemporary Art), and On the String (2010), commissioned by Singapore Arts Festival). She co-created the interactive sound installation The Canopy (2010-13), presented at World Stage Design Festival (UK 2013) and International Computer Music Conference (UK 2011). Koh collaborated with theatre director Steve Dixon on adapting T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land in a one-actor piece with video and electroacoustic sound.

Compositional style

Koh learned the piano from an early age. Her fascination for resonating strings in particular and sonic timbre in general led to taking up music professionally, coming to think of composition as a form of ‘calligraphy on a sonic canvas’. Through computer-assisted composition and audio processing, she could imagine sounds beyond those produced by acoustic instruments, and sonic space. She developed a concept of "theatre of music", where the sonic canvas became physical, i.e., the stage. That is, "whilst the narrative structure of the composition may be based on theatrical devices, the sound objects (effectively the play’s characters) are driven by musical identities and relationships". Koh’s work often starts with an external structure from architecture, calligraphy, or science. The 2010 multimedia performance ‘On the String’ is a consolidation of this approach. Asking herself: “What if we could hear the sounds of vibrating one-dimensional strings? Or the sonic texture created by various vibration patterns of a string curving space? If these imaginings were audible, what would they sound like?” Composition becomes a "systematic musicalisation of certain features of the scientific thought and, through interdisciplinary investigations (music, visual arts, interactive design, instrument design, light), culminates in a multimedia performance".

Selected compositions

Orchestra

• TAI (1997)
• Granite Harbour (1995)

Chamber music

• Fingerprints for octet (2015)
• Piano Peals (2006)
• Edenkobener Beethoven Bagatellen (2005)
• les pierres magenta for piano and ensemble (2002)
• la pierre magenta for piano (2001)

Works for stage and dance

• In the name of red (2015)
• The Waste Land (2013)
• Locust Wrath (2013)
• On the String (2010)
• 16 Wege das Nein zu vermeiden (2005)

Multimedia

• Shape of a City (2015)
• Hearing Lines (2013)

Discography

• Edenkobener Beethoven Bagatellen (2005, with BeeperDesign)
• Piano Peals (2004, with ABRSM)