Sing for Love 音為愛 2025

Last year, I decided to join a choral composition competition in Taiwan called 音為愛 Sing for Love. It is a biennial competition that emphasizes the importance of choral music in Taiwan through new freshly written love-themed music, and for the first time since its first batch, is no longer exclusive for Taiwanese only. A huge challenge for me though, is one of the rules: it must be written in either Mandarin, Taiwanese Minnan, Hakka, or Taiwan Aboriginal language(s).

There were some categories, so I wrote two songs–one for mixed choir category and the other for children choir category–and to my surprise I was awarded with high distinction (特優) –in other words, the first place–for my work for children choir, 《又是美好的一天》 (Another Beautiful Day). That was my first attempt to write a Mandarin song, and with my limited skills in Mandarin and a help from a good friend of mine, Danivu, I was so excited to hear it being premiered!

On 15 March 2025, a concert for the winning works was held in Zhongshan Hall, Taipei. I took part as one of the singers in Taipei Chamber Singers. All I can say is I was so happy to hear my works wonderfully performed by Hua Hsin Children Chorus! A bonus, one of my arrangements was performed by 3521 Rotary Choir, and some friends told me how they enjoyed both songs. I’m grateful that I am so blessed!

Some articles about the event: Musico | ET Today | CNA

PS. I’ll update with the video once it is on air.

HuaHsin Children Chorus
Taipei Chamber Singers
With Koh Tuan-Hoe, conductor of Hua Hsin Children Chorus
With Chia-Fen Weng, guest conductor of TCS

Most photos by Dada Image

My first time conducting choir in a competition here in Taiwan!

Sometime around mid-end 2023, a friend of mine, Pallas, suddenly offered me to conduct their teacher’s choir for a competition, which I immediately agreed on despite of knowing nothing (not even the name of the choir!). I was then informed that the choir consists of music teachers around New Taipei City area, practicing in Houde Elementary School (厚德國小) every Wednesday afternoon to join the competition which I later found out is the National Competition of Folksong for Teachers and Students (全國師生鄉土歌謠比賽).

The choir’s full name is 新北市聲懷絕技教師專業學習社群, but they represents Houde Elementary School for the competition. We competed in two categories: Taiwanese music and Southeast Asian music, and by the time I was appointed, they have already agreed with the repertoires for both categories in which they chose to sing my arrangement of Sarinande and Sik Sik Sibatumanikam for the Southeast Asian music category.

We ended up awarded with High Distinction for both categories! Yeay! Kudos to all the teachers that practice so hard for this competition. They even managed to dance and sing Indonesian folksong very well, so touching!

Beside conducting the choir, I found many choirs chose Indonesian folksongs, some of them performed my choral arrangements; O Ina Ni Keke was performed beautifully by Jinhua Elementary School (台北市金華國小) and Miaoli Jianguo Elementary School (苗栗縣建國國小) sung two commissioned works of mine, Anging Mamiri and Ampar-Ampar Pisang, and some other schools too! So happy to hear these familiar songs performed in Taiwan.

It was a great experience for me. You can find an article about it here (it’s in Chinese).