Jonathan Shin

Jonathan Shin  performs extensively as a soloist and chamber musician -- and he composes across multiple genres. Studying under the tutelage of Professor Thomas Hecht and Professor Ho Chee Kong, he graduated with honors from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. Shin is currently pursuing his Master of Music Degree in Composition (Classical) at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.  

Shin has won numerous prizes in Singaporean and international piano competitions, including being awarded top prizes in all four age categories of the National Piano and Violin Competition. In 2008, he clinched 3rd prize in the Young Pianists Division of the 18th Ibiza International Piano Competition in Spain. In 2009, he was awarded the Special Prize in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music’s Concerto Competition for his performance of Franck’s Symphonic Variations. Shin was a soloist in the same work when he won the coveted President’s Young Performers Concert, as part of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Shin won 1st prize in the Conservatory’s 2010 Piano Concerto Competition - its youngest winner ever at the age of 18. He performed the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor as soloist with the YSTCM Orchestra in the Gala Winner’s Concert. The Straits Times lauded him as “a supremely confident young man, whose perfect conception of ‘Sturm und Drang’ was only matched by the elegance and crispness of the playing... every note was well judged and delivered with conviction.” 

Shin performed internationally at the 27th European Piano Teachers Conference in Manchester, 2nd World Piano Pedagogy Conference in Slovenia, and the Kirishima International Music Festival. He has also performed in recitals in Bangkok, Medan (Indonesia) and in the 2007 National Day's joint Singapore Symphony Orchestra-Singapore Chinese Orchestra festivities. Eminent artists with whom Shin has worked with include Vladimir Viardo, Luis de Moura Castro, Eliso Virsaladze, and the late Mark Ray. 

Shin began composing at the age of 22. In 2015, his first musical was produced. Shin served as book-writer, lyricist and composer for Viva! la Singapura. The following year, he premiered his song cycle The Other Merlion and Friend. It was critically reviewed as “probably the most compelling and worthwhile new work from any Singaporean composer in recent years.” In his first year at Longy School of Music, Shin won both the Orchestral Composition Competition and the Concerto Competition.  His orchestral work Heloise and Abelard premiered in February 2018, and he will perform Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto this coming May. 

Shin is a founding member of the Lorong Boys, a Singaporean multi-genre quintet consisting of violins, flute, percussion and piano. In January 2018, the quintet took centre-stage as soloists in Shin’s Siginnah!, a concerto for solo quintet and orchestra commissioned by the Orchestra of the Music Makers.