Emerald Chee is a huge advocate for music as a tool to enrich people’s lives. She truly believes that anyone can pick music up as a skill, and has derived great joy from sharing music with her students for the past 15 years. Emerald performs bassoon in both freelance and community orchestra, runs a dedicated piano studio, and has been engaged as a bassoon to a few secondary schools in Singapore.

 

Emerald graduated with a Masters in Bassoon Performance from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory and before that a Diploma with the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Her teachers include Zhang Jin Min, Giorgio Versiglia and Liu Chang. She has also played with various orchestras in Singapore like Re:Sound, Singapore Lyric Opera Orchestra, The Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore, Orchestra of the Music Makers and Musicians’ Initiative. She has also guest played for Orchestras in the region with the Bandung Philharmonic Orchestra, Chiang Mai Festival Orchestra and the ASEAN-Russian Youth orchestra.

 

Emerald has been the main organiser for bassoon-related and Double Reed Day events in Singapore since 2011. Her main drive to organise such events arose from wanting to create more stir and buzz in the community, as such experiences were unavailable to her growing up. 

 

An avid believer in chamber music, Emerald is part of the Singaporean EDQ wind quintet that started out as a group of friends but ended up playing numerous concerts together, and winning the composer’s prize in the 2013 Henri Tomasi International Woodwind Quintet Competition. The quintet is currently on a hiatus, as various members pursue their own musical interests but hopes to get back together soon. 

 

An interesting fact about Emerald is that the interest in pursuing bassoon came to her only late in life, only in her mid-20s, and that she was in the shipping industry before making the switch over to music full-time.