Cheng Jin Koh

Cheng Jin Koh is a Singaporean composer, Yang Qin and violin performer currently based in New York. Her music is eclectic and diverse in personalities. As a Chinese and Western trained musician, her works incorporate various influences from these worlds and reflect her passionate enthusiasm in unifying colorful music idioms.

Most recently, Cheng Jin’s work Before Daybreak was selected as the Commissioned Work for the 2022 Singapore International Violin Competition, and her fusion, multidisciplinary work YAMA (God of Hell) for Mixed Ensemble and Dance was digitally produced for the 2020 Singapore International Festival of Arts by Singapore's Ensemble Æquilibrium. She was the youngest composer to be commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and has also worked with members of the Paris-based, world-renowned Ensemble InterContemporain, New York’s Metropolis Ensemble, Imani Winds, Society of New Music, and the Juilliard Orchestra; in Singapore, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO), Ding Yi Music Company, K口U Musik, Morse Percussion, T’ang Quartet, School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA) Chinese Music Ensemble, ACS Barker Road Chinese Plucked Strings Ensemble and others. Her multiple accolades include the Society of New Music 2020 New York Federation of Music Clubs’ Brian Israel Prize, the Palmer Dixon and Gena Raps Chamber Music Prizes from the Juilliard School, as well as the Margaret Blackburn, John Eaton Memorial and Boston New Music Initiative Prizes. Her works have been performed at the Singapore Esplanade Concert Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center and National Sawdust, the National Flute Association Convention in San Diego, Australia Woodend Winter Arts Music Festival, Sidney Chapel in Cambridge, UK and China Conservatory Concert Hall. Notable summer festivals she participated in included the Yale-Norfolk New Music Workshop where her work was commissioned, and both the Bowdoin International Music Festival and the European American Musical Alliance (EAMA). She is currently a member of the Composers’ Society of Singapore (CSS) and the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York.

As a proficient Yang Qin musician who, at eighteen, has won the Singapore National Chinese Music Competition (Open Category) with a solo debut with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, Cheng Jin is indebted to her teachers Miss Qu Jian Qing and Miss Seah Poh Chun, as well as Dr. Kelly Tang, who was her first mentor in Composition at School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA) without whom she would not have started creating. She is also grateful to her pedagogues at The Juilliard School, Dr. Robert Beaser and Dr. Melinda Wagner, both who were instrumental in her pursuit of Bachelor’s (Hons) and Master’s Degrees in Music Composition, fully supported by Singapore’s Loke Cheng Kim Foundation. She is also honored to have been the Teaching Fellow for Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program (Composition) for two years and its Evening Division (Music Theory), as well as a 2018 - 19 Gluck Fellowship recipient performing for various communities in New York. Ms. Koh is currently a MacCracken PhD Fellow at New York University (College of Arts and Science).