TAN CHAN BOON - An Inktroduction

As composer, conductor and musicologist, Tan Chan Boon's works have been commissioned and performed in Taiwan, China, Southeast Asia, Ukraine, France, Germany, USA and Singapore. In 1998, Tan received the Top Local Serious Music Award from the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (COMPASS). The same year, his woodwind quintet "Homeland" was one of the few works selected from 173 compositions from 87 countries to be performed at the 5th International Youth Music Festival at Kiev. Tan is the recipient of the JCCI Singapore Foundation Culture Award 2004.

Since 1997, Tan has held five retrospective concerts: MY MUSIC, MY ART - HARVEST OF A DECADE (1997), AN EVENING OF STRING QUARTETS BY TAN CHAN BOON (1998), MILLENNIUM MEMORY (2001), ABSOLUTE SOLO (2002), and THE RETROUVAILLES... in Paris (2002). Between 1997 and 1998, his string quartet "Retrouvailles" was performed five times at Victoria Concert Hall, at the halls of the Westin-Stamford and Ritz Carlton, and also twice at the Alliance Francaise in Singapore.

In 1999, his works were premiered over four consecutive months from March to June. These included "Ostinatissimo" for violin and piano, a quartet movement, "Polyphonic Studies" for solo violin and the "Grand Caprice" for Viola. Significantly, the latter two works also received multiple performances in Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai.

Tan started composing when he was 12 and studied with pioneer Singaporean composer Leong Yoon Pin. Tan also studied conducting with the late Israeli conductor, Maestro Shalom Ronly-Riklis. At 20, Tan entered the prestigious Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and studied composition with French composers Jacques Casterede and Michel Merlet. Tan was a recipient of the prestigious Scholarship of the Comite Albert Roussel Fondation, which was founded specially for the 3eme Cycle in composition (post-graduate studies). Within two years, he completed the Ecole Normale's advanced degree in composition. In the following year, he was awarded the highest degree from this Institute, the Superieur degree, which usually takes between three to four years to complete. Tan, then at 23, became one of the youngest students ever to complete the 3eme Cycle in composition.

In 1990, he received a grant from the then Singapore Cultural Foundation for an advanced conducting course at the Ecole Normale. There, he attended master classes including one by the legendary Leonard Bernstein in 1989. In 1992, Tan's orchestra work "Autumn" was premiered by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the Festival of Arts' New Music Forum. He made his debut as a conductor in March 1993. Tan has conducted performances of his works at the Taipei National Concert Hall and was a semi-finalist at the 16th International Masterplayers Competition for Conductors in 1993 at Lugano, Switzerland. In November 1997, he conducted the Singapore premiere of Wagner's Prelude to "Parsifal" with the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra.

President of the Gustav Mahler and the Anton Bruckner Societies in Singapore, which he founded with friends in 1995 and 1996 respectively, Tan is also active in the research and promotion of the music of Bruckner and Mahler. He has attended the International Mahler Festival in Amsterdam (1995) and the International Bruckner Festival in Linz, Austria (1996). Tan has given more than 90 workshops and talks on the works of Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler in Paris, Malaysia and Singapore.

Tan's main works include three Symphonies: No.1 "Aurore" (1986-89), No.2 "Genese" (1989-95) and No.3 "Romance" (2002-04), a symphonic poem, overtures, chamber and other instrumental works. In 2000, Tan's Symphony No.2 "Genese" was recorded on CD with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, with the composer conducting.