Artistic Director
Singaporean conductor Chan Tze Law is Associate Professor and Vice Dean of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore where he is a founding faculty member. Chan lectures in conducting and music leadership and oversees the conservatory’s Masters and Continuing Education and Training (CET) courses as well as Career Orientation and Community Engagement (COCE) and Student Life dimensions. He has recently been appointed to serve concurrently as Vice Dean at the Office of Student Affairs overseeing the University’s newly reorganised Centre for the Arts.
Chan holds performance diplomas in violin performance and teaching, bachelor and doctoral degrees in conducting as well as a masters degree in management. A former student of violinists John Ludlow and Hugh Bean and conducting luminaries Christopher Adey and Norman Del Mar, Chan is the founding chief conductor of the Australian International Summer Orchestral Institute and has taught masterclasses in conducting at the Peabody Institute, USA, Royal Academy of Music, UK and the Queensland Conservatorium, Australia. He has served on the selection committee of the Oxford (University) Conducting Institute International Conducting Studies Conference and conducted at the Australian Youth Orchestra’s 2020 and 2022 National Music Camp. Since 2017 he has also co-presented in Prof Kenneth Paul Tan’s ‘Tune in to leadership’ course at the annual Senior Management programme of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, as well other leadership through music programmes and workshops for NUS faculties and major Singapore and international business organisations.
As a conductor, Chan has appeared at major European music festivals and led orchestras and soloists in China and the Asia Pacific region. His performances of Mahler’s 8th Symphony with award-winning Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) and Sing50 concerts with Lang Lang and the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra (MFO) celebrating Singapore’s Jubilee were named ‘Best Concerts of 2015’ by Singapore’s Sunday Times. In the Mahler symphony, Germany’s Der neue Merker observed that “listeners felt they have concluded a great journey of time and spirit”. The West Australian lavished praise on his performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: “Tze Law (Chan) did wonders from the podium. It was a tour de force”. Chan’s performance of Elgar’s The Music Makers in Taiwan was described by Classical Voice America as “breathtaking walls of sound and intimate moments of haunting beauty”.
In 2020 he made history when he conducted OMM and an international star cast at the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay to critical acclaim in Die Walküre, Singapore’s first-ever production of a Wagner ring cycle opera, with Opera (UK) proclaiming that Chan “elicited a multitude of expressive nuances and drew immense power without force from his musicians.”
Chan made his Singapore conducting debut with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in 2001. He is music director of Singapore’s MFO and the award-winning OMM and was bestowed the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore’s award for Artistic excellence for his contributions to the Singapore music community in 2018. Chan’s concerts and CD recordings has been featured on Singapore Airlines’ KrisWorld in-flight classical music selection, broadcast on Australia’s ABC Classic FM, UK’s BBC Radio 3, and can be heard on Spotify and Apple Music.