Yap Shing Min

soprano

Yap Shing Min graduated from the University of Birmingham with a Joint First Class Honours degree in Music and Mathematics under the Singapore Public Service Commission’s Overseas Specialist Award in 2002, and later obtained a Masters Degree in Historical Performance (Voice) with Distinction from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD). Her principal voice teachers include Buddug Verona James, Lim-Quek Soo Hiang and Andrea Calladine.

Shing Min has given several successful recitals and performed as soloist, both locally and abroad. In 2009, she collaborated in a lute song project with Lynda Sayce, one of the UK’s leading lutenists and director of the lute ensemble Chordophony, that culminated in a recital of Dowland’s lute songs.  She has also given recitals in Cardiff and Zurich, premiering Andrew Wilson-Dickson’s Obsession, a French cantata for soprano, Baroque violin, viola da gamba, and harpsichord in 2009.

Locally, Shing Min has performed at the 2015 and 2013 Singapore Lieder Festival, co-presented by the Sing Song Club and the Arts House. She has also sung solos with the TO Ensemble (2016); soprano solo in Bach’s Magnificat in D (2012) and in Handel’s Messiah with the Voices of the East Indies, conducted by Ng Tian Hui (2010); soprano solo in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu at the YTL Concert of Celebration featuring Andrea Bocelli at the Singapore Botanic Gardens (2010); first fairy solo in Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer’s Night Dream (2009) and the soprano solo in Bach’s Mass in B minor (2008) with The Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Lim Yau. The Philharmonic Choral Society has also presented Shing Min in a recital entitling From Britten to Dowland to ‘Songs from the Chinese’ with guest guitarist from the UK, William Browne in 2010.

A choral enthusiast, Shing Min has sung with numerous choirs including the Raffles Chorale, the Birmingham University Singers, the Singapore Symphony Chorus, the Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the RWCMD Chorus and the Welsh Camerata, a specialist early music choir in Cardiff, benefiting from the direction and musicianship of conductors such as Sir Charles Mackerras, Lim Yau, Joseph Flummerfelt, Chifuru Matsubara and Andrew Wilson-Dickson.

photo by Wei Yuet