Lim Soon Lee
Artistic Director
NUS Symphony Orchestra

Lim Soon Lee joined the National University of Singapore Concert Orchestra in April 1994 as Music Director/Resident Conductor. Under his leadership, the Orchestra was inaugurated as the National University of Singapore Symphony Orchestra (NUSSO) in September 1995.

Under a Public Service Commission/Singapore Symphony Orchestra Scholarship, he graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Music (Distinction) from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, New York. From 1987 to 1997, he was with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra as Sub-Principal Violist, and was Singapore's only representative in the 1988 World Philharmonic Orchestra in Montreal, Canada.

Currently, the Music Director/Resident Conductor of the Singapore National Youth Orchestra (SNYO) and the Associate Principal of String Performance at the School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA), Soon Lee’s dedication to nurturing young music talents for the local youth music scene continues.

Foo Say Ming
Violin Soloist

At the 4th National Music Competition in Singapore (1983), Singapore violinist Foo Say Ming won the Best Performer Award unanimously awarded by the judging panel. Under the tutelage of his mentor Ho Boon Thiam and the former concertmaster of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra Pavel Prantl, he was awarded a Public Service Commission/Singapore Symphony Orchestra Scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music (London, UK). He was later accepted into the Conservatoire de Lausanne (Switzerland), to study with French violinist Pierre Amoyal, a protégé of Jascha Heifetz.

In 2011, as NUSSO’s Assistant Conductor, he led the NUSSO in the premier of promising young Singaporean composer Chen Zhangyi’s Rain Tree, and the Singapore’s premier of Sculthorpe’s Piano Concerto with British virtuoso, Geoffrey Saba. Say Ming works closely with young aspiring musicians in Singapore from SNYO, NUSSO, and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). In 2012, Say Ming was appointed Head of the Strings at the NAFA Music Department.

Jian Qing was born in Shanghai, China, where she began learning yangqin at the age of nine under the tutelage of Mr Wang You De, and was accepted by the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra at the age of 13. Qu has been tutored under various Yangqin masters like Professor Xiang Zu Hua, renowned Yangqin performer Pang Bo-er and Mr Zhang Xiao Feng.

Jian Qing has performed all over the world and is an active participant in many World Yangqin Festivals. In 2006, she was invited to Poland in Chamber Music Festival Arsenal Nights to present the Yangqin and chamber music Phoenix with distinguished Wroclaw Chamber Orchestra.

Today, Jian Qing devotes her time to music education. She currently teaches in the National University of Singapore and National Institute of Education. Her students have won first prize in the Singapore National Chinese Orchestra Soloist Competition for the Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels respectively.