One of today’s most exciting artists, Singaporean composer Diana Soh is based in Paris and works across a wide range of disciplines—from chamber and orchestral music to dance, film, choral works, and multimedia site-specific creations. Her music explores performance interactivity, theatricality, and vivid sound colour, often developed through close collaborations with performers. Known for her interest in theatre and integrating the use of technology, she often surprises her audiences and finds unique ways to address the social issues of our time in her work and “composes the impossible” (Concert Classic).
Recent highlights include The Carmen Case, a music theatre work co-commissioned by La Monnaie, La Chapelle Musicale, Gulbenkian Foundation, Théâtre du Luxembourg, and ensemble Ars Nova, staged by Alexandra Lacroix. Premiered in 2023 at Le TAP in Poitiers, it will tour to Opéra de Bordeaux and Théâtre du Luxembourg in 2024. Upcoming projects include L’avenir nous le dira, an opera for the children’s choir of Opéra de Lyon and robotised orchestra, with staging by Alice Laloy and text by Emmanuelle Destremeau, to premiere during the 2025 Lyon Festival. That same season will see a new work Songs from whence I came for electronics, mezzo Rinat Shaham, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (Festival Manifeste IRCAM) and an hour long program Sous notre peau for Quatour Présages.
Vocal writing continues to be central to Diana’s work. Following Tu es Magique (Maîtrise de Radio France, Festival Présences 2022) and Ackee (Sequenza 93, Paris 2024 Olympics), she has also written La Ville-Zizi for soprano Laura Bowler, Unbroken for mezzo Rosie Middleton, and I linger lately beyond my time for soprano Claron MacFadden and Ensemble Intercontemporain (Aix-en- Provence Festival 2024). Diana will also perform with the SYC Ensemble Singers for their 60th anniversary in a new work The body electric.
2024 was a prolific year for instrumental works, with premieres including on, off and on again for solo organ (Philharmonie de Paris), And those who were seen dancing for the Arditti Quartet, and I forget to remember when I am with you, a large-scale work integrating five pieces across six organisations in the French Alps, with performances from July to October.
Earlier milestones include A is for Aiyah (Singapore Symphony Orchestra, 2018), sssh (Mettis Quartet, Aix 2018), and Zylan ne chantera plus, a monodrama with Yann Verburgh staged by Richard Brunel (Opéra de Lyon “hors les murs”, 2021). Diana was composer-in-residence at La Muse en Circuit (2012–13), Divertimento Ensemble (2019), and Opéra de Bordeaux (2023–24). Her monographic CD Still, Yet, And Again (Stradivarius) was released in 2019.
Her works have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, France Musique, RAI, WDR, and ORF, and performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain, Klangforum Wien, Arditti Quartet, Ensemble CourtCircuit, Schallfeld Ensemble, and more. She collaborates with artists including Elise Chauvin, Emmanuelle Ophèle, Jean Rondeau, James McVinnie, and conductors Jean Deroyer, Pierre-André Valade, Fabien Gabel, Lucie Leguay and Sofi Jeannin.
Diana studied in Singapore, the USA, and France, and has worked with Ferneyhough, Sciarrino, Eötvös, Rihm, and Furrer. She received Singapore’s Young Artist Award (2015), the Impuls Composition Prize (2017), and SACEM’s Francis and Mica Salabert Prize (2021). She was composer in residence at Opera de Bordeaux during the 2023/2024 season and will be visiting professor and composer in residence at the University of Toronto for autumn 2025.
- updated January 2025
I have always been fascinated by the physicality of the performers and have attached great importance to their presence on stage. Hence, in this piece, I hope to explore the duality of musical gestures between what is seen and what is heard. The use of motion sensors allows me to explore the idea that theatre itself produces sounds, and sounds produces theatre. This use of such technology is also a way of returning the autonomy of the electronic processing back to the performer. In Arboretum of myths and trees, the singer interprets the electronics: what she does , both physically and musically will affect the electronics.
The soprano is thus a central figure that is both supported and contradicted by the ensemble. I wrote and composed a series of gestures that the singer must perform in addition to singing. Hence, with her hand movements, she controls and interprets the execution of electronic treatments on the harp and piano, while the sounds of the flutes can we viewed as an extension of the vocal writing.
The composition of the music and gestures are, naturally, subjected to the psychological states of these mythic characters Daphne and Apollo. This myth is well known: to avenge the taunts of Apollo, Eros makes him fall in love with the nymph Daphne, while generating a total disgust in the latter; To escape the rape of Apollo, Daphne transformed into a laurel tree.
The version given by Jamie R. Currie - English writer, poet, philosopher and musicologist - is a modern semi-abstract narrative. When writing the text, he had in mind the statue by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) in 1625, which can be seen today at the Villa Borghese in Rome: the gesture of Apollo almost touching Daphne, the silent cry that appears on the her face, the frightened young girl already half transformed.
Arboretum is a botanical term for a collection of trees meant for scientific study. Here it is a metaphor for the form of this work which presents 3 versions of the myth. The commonality between myths and trees lies in structure - that of a tireless arborescent development. The figures of myth are protean and inconsistent: each era projects onto the same myths its own nuances and metaphors to better illustrate the societal issues of the day. The myth here serves both as sounding metaphor and reality: the choice of which is at the same time irrelevant ( I could choose another one ) and absolutely crucial because it gives the work its coherence and its shape.
Each of the 3 versions offers a different perspective of the scene - in a different mode of expression and syntax.
In the first part , Apollo dream - I imagine a drunk, leaning against the bar, remembering his deed, trying to dissolve his problems in alcohol. Then comes the flight of Daphne: the text is in the present, panic speech with rushed words and little regard for coherent meaning. In the third and last part is the singing of the tree: we hear the creaking of the tree bark, the rustling of leaves and one voice remains, that of the poor Daphne.
The myth of Apollo and Daphne is not for me eternal love story but rather a story of possession and eternal regret.
This English version is an edited transcript of an interview by Jeremy Szpirglas, Manifeste 2013.
“I linger lately beyond my time” is a loose response to Eight Songs for a Mad King by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with a libretto by Randolph Stow based on the words of George III.
Our version, with text by James R. Currie and music by Diana Soh provides an entry into the world of his wife and counterpart Queen Charlotte.
Her life as regent marked the shift into the modern world—a world in which the call of liberation was everywhere, and yet everywhere on stage (in the name of progress and liberation in art) women were shown as mad.
How do you write a piece about someone trying to hold it all together?
And how do you write music about sanity and about questioning the assumption that it's always about extreme states? That is our endeavour.
Co-commission by Festival d’Aix en Provence and Ensemble Intercontemporain, this concert monologue will be performed by Claron McFadden and Ensemble Intercontemporain on 5 July 2024 at the Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède during the 2024 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.