Two major choir festivals scheduled in July, a sign of Singapore’s booming choral scene

SINGAPORE – Choral lovers will either be spoilt for choice or fatigued by indecision in July.

Some will certainly wish they could split themselves to attend the two concurrent international choral festivals slated to take place in Singapore across eight venues on the five days from July 16 to 20.

The Singapore International Choral Festival (SICF) got there first, announcing dates in 2025 for its 10th edition in 2026.

The anniversary headliner is a July 19 concert by Norwegian women’s choir Cantus, best known for their vocals on the soundtrack of Disney’s Frozen movies (2013 and 2019). The competition – one of five stops on the Asia Choral Grand Prix – has grown in reputation and size, from 49 choirs in its inaugural edition to 74 in 2026.

The SICF – headed by ONE Choral Company artistic director and veteran conductor Lim Ai Hooi – will have to face competition for audiences here from Voices of Singapore (VOS).

VOS is organising nine concerts at the inaugural Voices Of The World (VOTW) International Choir Festival. It is an unhappy coincidence that VOS’ artistic director Darius Lim says he would like to avoid in future editions, but one he had to make this time to secure certain children’s choirs touring through Asia.

Audiences who want to witness choral musicmaking at the highest level will pick a competition like the SICF, with emotional stakes and intense rivalry not unlike the ongoing FIFA World Cup.

Those in search of more community fare at a high level of artistry will find VOTW more congenial with its mass choir spectacles.

Such a diary clash between two heavyweight choral events would have been improbable 15 years ago, when much of the Singapore choral scene was concentrated in the co-curricular school system.

Today, however, the community choir scene is heaving with festivals and concerts. Tickets to SICF’s opening and grand prix performances are already sold out and VOS is well supported by its 2,300 members – a figure almost 30 times its official member count in 2019.

Although no authority, including the National Arts Council (NAC), has official figures on the number of active choristers, the number of community choirs of all stripes and sizes has surged in the past decade and a half, from inter-generational choirs to language-based ones.

Even as the Singapore Symphony Choruses grew to 135 members in 2026, other choirs working the symphonic repertoire have come onto the scene – such as the not-for-profit Music For People Festival Orchestra, which trotted out a 220-member choir for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in June.

Why Singapore’s choral scene is booming today

The boom is rooted in a rigorous school choir system – dating back to the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) 1988 Choral Excellence Programme – which produced award-winning school choirs and nurtured young amateurs.

Paradoxically, it was the undoing of this competitive system, centred around the intensely meritocratic Singapore Youth Festival (SYF), in the early 2010s that fuelled the current surge, according to conductors that The Straits Times (ST) spoke to.

Lim launched SICF in 2014 in part because MOE was slashing funding for choirs to compete overseas and the SYF’s cut-throat awards system was defanged in 2013.

Believing that choral standards in Singapore can be elevated only with exposure to world-class choirs, she says: “I decided to bring the world to Singapore. It’s as simple as that.”

Choral Directors’ Association Singapore (CDAS) president Yong Chee Foon – who primarily conducts school choirs and is associate artistic director of SICF – says the school environment has become less competitive, with rehearsal hours decreasing over the years.

Where he is able to flex artistically now is in the growing scene of alumni choirs, where school choristers return to sing. He says: “I have my alumni choirs because I think it creates challenges for me as well as for them. We challenge each other.”

The changing school system played a part in pushing younger conductors to find work with community choirs and driving their music-making aspirations outside of school.

For CDAS vice-president and young conductor Ellissa Sayampanathan, who studied in Hungary and Britain, returning to Singapore during the Covid-19 pandemic meant the school system was not her first port of call. She co-founded her own choral collective Chroma and is also assistant choral conductor with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO).

“A choir is the entry point of getting to make music because you don’t have to learn an instrument – your instrument is free of charge,” she says of the choral boom, which was facilitated by the isolating effects of the pandemic. “Suddenly, people realise what’s important to them – being able to sing and being present.”

She also notes that the declining emphasis on quality in favour of equity in school choirs might ironically have had a countereffect. “The more affluent seem to be moving out of the school environment to pursue particular opportunities that their child might need, be it arts or sports. There is a huge population which doesn’t have the resources to be able to seek these opportunities outside.”

VOS, in particular, is one of the rare Singapore choral organisations to have succeeded with a subscription model, as participants pay slightly more than $200 a quarter to sing in one of its 35 groups.

About 800 of its members are under 18, although the organisation's largest demographic is seniors 55 years old and above. Differing levels of commitment and community make VOS a natural entry point for new and former singers.

One such member is 29-year-old freelance theatre practitioner Krys Yuan, who has no music background but joined VOS’ non-auditioned adult female choir Chorus of the People: Inspire in 2025.

Yuan wanted to improve her musical sense and private music lessons would have cost more, so VOS was an affordable way for her to engage with music. She is travelling with the choir to Berlin in 2026.

She says: “It’s very wholesome – but more than just a hangout, as the conductor gives us goals to reach and songs that are a bit challenging.”

Sayampanathan says this rise in recreational and community singing has had positive effects on the choral ecosystem, as singers become paying audiences and even patrons for the choral scene.

While the school system ensured a steady pool of jobs for choral conductors, it was less the case for professional singers.

However, professional groups like Chroma are ensuring that singers are paid, marking the nascent beginnings of professional singing groups in Singapore.

Boom or bubble?

ONE Choral Company and VOS are sanguine about the booming demand.

Lim Ai Hooi hopes that the international choral scene, with Asia being one of the fast-growing regions, “won’t see Singapore as just a stopover, but a central hub for international choral excellence”. Darius Lim, on the other hand, wants one in 10 Singaporeans to sing in a group by the next 50 years.

Both the SICF and VOS’ flagship festival in September have been supported by the NAC, which has also supported capability development and participation in overseas competitions.

Serene Lim, NAC’s director for performing arts, says “choir performances have seen a steady return after the pandemic”.

Separately, infrastructure that was not around a decade ago is taking shape – such as Singapore-based Muziksea, South-east Asia’s first fully digital choral music publisher.

Cultural Medallion recipient Jennifer Tham – who has been artistic director of the SYC Ensemble Singers since 1986 – is more circumspect.

While she thinks that mass participation will continue to grow as people hunger for singing experiences, she also warns that this “bubble of mass participation” is at risk of bursting if the scene is overcrowded with events and if efforts are siloed instead of collaborative. “Singaporeans are not very good at sharing. We always think more is more, and we somehow need more for ourselves.”

The SYC Ensemble Singers – formerly Singapore Youth Choir – is the longest-running English-language choir in Singapore, its formation as a combined school choir under MOE pre-dating the wider push for choirs in schools.

Under Tham, its focus has been on new and experimental music – an area she thinks is underrepresented in a moment which tends to regard music as either therapy or entertainment. Audiences, she says, have been harder to woo as more groups are staging performances.

To continue growing the choral scene, Darius says there is a need for proper training and accreditation for conductors, a platform VOS is developing under its Choral Scholars Programme.

Yong says more international exposure is needed for choristers, something the SICF is doing as it hosts a satellite event of the World Symposium On Choral Music as part of the festival.

Sayampanathan highlights the need for mid-sized venues for choirs as most choral-friendly venues are either smaller recital sites or large locations like the Esplanade Concert Hall. Venue hire is also becoming expensive and it is still difficult to make a living as a professional choral singer in Singapore.

Despite these challenges, Sayampanathan thinks the rising interest in singing is good for Singapore.

“First of all, it’s a cathartic experience. Number two, it brings culture into your own home. Third, it gives you access to a variety of other cultures – you get access to languages, history, and an understanding of a wide variety of emotions.

“It allows people to interact with each other, which builds time with the community and to form similarities with people who are different. All of these things are so important to building society.”