Chan Tze Law is Associate Director of Singapore's
Yong Siew Toh
Conservatory of Music, Music Director of the
Singapore Festival Orchestra
and Founding Chief Conductor of the
Australian
International Summer Orchestral Institute.
First
trained as a violinist, Maestro Chan graduated from the Royal College of
Music
, London, where his teachers included eminent
British conductors Christopher Adey, John
Forster, and the late Norman Del
Mar, as well as renowned British concertmasters John Ludlow and Hugh
Bean. During his violinistic career he came under
the tutelage of American virtuoso Charles
Treger and co-founded of one of Singapore
's most successful chamber music groups "The Chamber
Circle".
Chan is a frequent guest conductor and acclaimed performances of
Rachmaninoff's
Symphonic
Dances and Berlioz's
Symphonie
Fantastique were broadcast by Australia's ABC FM Classics. His
recent return appearances to conduct Mahler's monolithic
Symphony No.6 and Shostakovich's
Symphony No 8 was
described as a "Triumph" by the Australian press. In Singapore, he
conducts the Singapore Festival Orchestra as well as the HSBC Youth
Excellence Initiative concerts.
Chan made his Singapore conducting debut with the
Singapore Symphony Orchestra in
2001 and has conducted orchestras in South-East Asia, Australia,
China and the USA. Singapore's Straits Times noted "...it was
refreshing to find sensuousness and restraint in equal degree, just
when the music needed it most..."
President of Manhattan School
of Music
Robert Sirota; "...The
music always comes first with Maestro Chan, followed closely by the
musicians he is mentoring through his work, and the audiences for
whom he is performing..." World-renowned British conductor
and orchestra trainer
Christopher
Adey hailed his innovative and far-sighted approach to
conducting, "...his ability to impart the benefit of his years of
experience in so many fields of instrumental music making is
formidable..."
The press lauded Chan's recent appearances at the
Singapore Arts Festival,
The Straits Times praising the Singapore
Festival Orchestra's "admirable unison and shared passion" and the
Business Times "rapid playing with perfect syncronisation". Chan's
work at the helm of conservatory's
New Music Ensemble received similar
critical acclaim, The Straits Times declaring, "...Under the
direction of conductor Chan Tze Law, the cause of new music here
today could hardly be in better hands...". Recent premieres of
works by Australian composers
James
Ledger and
Douglas Knehans were
critically acclaimed and he has also worked with Singaporean
composers Ho Chee Kong,
Leong Yoon
Pin,
Bernard Tan and the late
Tsao Chieh.
Chan's pedagogical interests and activities are international and
wide-ranging. He has lectured at world renown American conducting
pedagogue
Gustav Meier's graduate
studio, and returned twice to the
University of Western
Australia as Artist-in-Residence.
He has conducted at
Trinity College
of Music
in London, Tasmanian Conservatorium of
Music in Australia and has received international recognition
for developing Singapore's Yong Siew Toh Conservatory
Orchestra into one of the best of its type in Asia during his
tenure as its founding music director. Most recently, he led
Singapore's newest orchestra the
Orchestra of the Music Makers
to critical acclaim.
At the conservatory, Chan teaches conducting, conducts the New
Music Ensemble and also heads the Ensembles and Professional
Development Office. He is a member of the
National Arts Council's Art Resource
Panel, Singapore Symphony Orchestra's Audience Development
Committee,
Singapore
National Youth Orchestra's Management board and the
Singapore Armed Forces Music and
Drama Company’s Supervisory board.