FACULTY

Dr Adeline Wong

Senior Lecturer, Composition

muswyma@nus.edu.sg

Adeline Wong is a Singapore-based Malaysian composer whose works span orchestral, chamber, theatre, and film music. Her compositions are noted for bold, kaleidoscopic textures that reflect both Southeast Asian heritage and contemporary Western traditions. Her music has been performed internationally by ensembles including the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker (Germany), New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, Bang on a Can (USA), Orkest De Ereprijs (the Netherlands), and Quatuor Bozzini (Canada).

Adeline trained in music composition at the Eastman School of Music and the Royal College of Music, London, and received her PhD in Music Research (Composition) from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She is Senior Lecturer in Composition and Theory at the Yong Siew Toh (YST) Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore, and serves as President of the Malaysian Composers Collective and Artistic Director of the Free Hand Malaysian Contemporary Composers Piano Festival. In 2023, she was the mentor for the Southeast Asian Golden Age Symphony, a regional collaborative commission bringing together emerging composers from Southeast Asia, and will serve as Convener for YST’s Performers(’) Present International Artistic Research Symposium in 2026.

Recent highlights include invitations to the Asian Composers League Festivals in Vietnam, Taiwan, New Zealand and Japan, serving as a panelist for Women Leaders in Classical Music at the Francophonie Festival, and commissions from Tonhalle Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker as well as the International Double Reed Society. She has presented her research at leading institutions worldwide, including the University of Auckland (New Zealand), Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (Turkey), and the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music (Thailand), contributing to international discourse on contemporary music scholarship. A two-time recipient of Malaysia’s Boh Cameronian Arts Awards and featured in Top 10 of Asia’s list of New Generation Music Composers, she has been recognised for her contributions to contemporary music in the region.

Her compositional and research practice integrates diverse artistic disciplines and global perspectives through music composition. Informed by both Southeast Asian and Western traditions, her work explores repetition, texture, and cultural hybridity as means of articulating a voice that integrates heritage and contemporary expression, cultivating a distinctive and continually evolving compositional language.