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Recently, I had the opportunity to present at the fifth conference of the International Network for Artistic Research in Jazz (INARJ), held at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel under the theme “Places and Spaces”. It was a fitting setting for the paper I brought there: “Pocket as Embodied Space: Reflections from the Bandstand.” The conference framed artistic research in jazz as a serious and expanding site of inquiry, explicitly naming embodiment as one of its core strand

This year’s Chinese New Year was meant to be a short reset. I took a few days in Phnom Penh with my wife to step away from marking, proposals, and the quiet strategising that comes with building a life in higher education. It was supposed to be a pause, a sightseeing holiday. Instead, it became perspective. We visited Tuol Sleng (S21), the former school turned prison under the Khmer Rouge. The rooms are preserved as they were found: metal bed frames, shackles, faint blood spl

Last week, I had the opportunity to facilitate an IN-depth module at the University of the Arts Singapore titled Artist as Futurist. Although UAS provided the workshop content, the experience resonated strongly enough that I felt compelled to document the learning trajectories, tensions, and shifts that emerged across the three sessions. What follows is not a summary of content delivered. It is, instead, a reflection on how thinking evolved through discussion, critique, and m

This past year marked a genuine paradigm shift for me. Not in the superficial sense of adding more credentials or outputs, but in the deeper work of clarifying my research voice, my pedagogic stance, and the relationship between my teaching, research, and supervision. I have come to understand more clearly how these three dimensions must cohere if the work is to be sustainable and meaningful. At the same time, I began to recognise what was no longer serving me, including cert

Lately, I have been reflecting quite a bit on my own research identity. Not the academic kind involving CV lines or publications, but the deeper question of what I actually care about in music and teaching. That process unexpectedly nudged me into this piece: a small attempt to articulate something I have sensed for years but rarely put into words. I have been sitting with a recurring realisation these past few years, something that shows up in teaching, performing, supervisi

SRMC recently put out a short Ask Me Anything reel just of me on a stool answering questions about guilty-pleasure tunes, on-stage slip-ups, and the best advice I’ve had as a musician; light stuff! But it reminded me that a lot of this work happens in small, unscripted moments and questions answered honestly. Light, fun, nothing academic, but it landed at the exact moment the term is winding down across all seven schools I’m teaching in this year. The term is ending in phase

I wanted to take a moment to document this while it’s still fresh in my head. Earlier this month, I played what might have been my first proper large-scale jazz gig in years: a big band show with the Julian Chan Jazz Orchestra and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas. It felt like stepping back into a life I once knew intimately. Long rehearsals, pages of charts, setups, fills, the satisfying punch of a shout chorus landing exactly right. We even

Some milestones occur quietly for you, but this one didn’t. When I first saw the email saying “accepted for publication,” I felt that...

I recently spoke to a few friends going through something, as we often are in Singapore. It translates to many versions of the same:...

Some milestones don’t feel like turning points. They just feel like the next square on a board you’ve been steadily moving across for...

Some students come and go. But every year, one or two stay with you. There’s one I’ve taught since he was barely old enough to hold the...

The Fellowship of the Victoria College of Music (FVCM) is a Level 7 qualification, equivalent to postgraduate level. I am highly honoured...

This month, I became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a milestone I’m genuinely proud of. I first came across the FRSA while...

This month, I officially stepped into the lecture room for a Master’s-level module: Creative Workshopping for Education and Community...

This month was all about mapping out new teaching directions. I’ve been refreshing four modules.. everything from pedagogic theory to...

\This month, I decided to chase two new Fellow-level titles: one for composition, one for percussion. Why? Because I know I’m good at...

2024 was the year I stopped being just a working musician and started building a portfolio. Not for vanity, but because I finally...

2024 will always be huge for me: I got married, and I became a doctor. The first is personal, and the second, my Doctor of Music...

Between 2012 and 2022, I completed four performance diplomas across four very different instruments: the LTCL in Drum Kit (Trinity...

I’ve spent years performing, teaching, arranging, building curriculum, earning qualifications, and navigating multiple musical worlds...