Music Director

Our Music Director, Susanna Saw

Susanna Saw graduated from the Melba Memorial Conservatorium of Music, majoring in piano and vocal singing as a second study. She attained her Australian Kodaly Certificate from the University of Queensland, and has performed in various concerts in Australia and Malaysia, both as a soloist and accompanist. She was selected to sing with the Melbourne Chorale on many occasions and worked with various internationally known conductors, such as Mariss Jansen and Neemi Jarvi.

Starting her choral teaching experience with the Australian Boys’ Choir, Susanna moved on to become Assistant Choral Conductor and Vocal Coach at the prestigious MacRobertson Girls’ High School in Victoria in 1998.

On her return from Australia in 1999, she realized that the choral scene in Malaysia is not as vibrant as she had hoped it to be. Thus, she resolved to raise the awareness and standard of the local choral scene through education and sharing the experience she has gained whilst in Australia.

With that burning desire, she successfully set up the Ipoh Children’s Choir, The Young KL Singers and The KL Children’s Choir and was involved with the Penang State Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. Further to that, she had also been a choir tutor at various schools in Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur, some of which had gone on to become champions at national and international competitions under her tutelage. She is currently a tutor and choir director at the Malaysian Institute of Arts and University of Malaya’s Music Faculty choir.

When not teaching, Susanna immerses herself in the development and advancement of the choral scene in Malaysia. She founded the Young Singers Choral Festival in 2003, an annual festival for young musicians in Malaysia to gain choral knowledge from the various invited choir tutors from U.K, Denmark, U.S and Singapore. Through her choirs and numerous choral activities, she has created recognition and awareness on choral singing, and its importance. Always eager to share knowledge and experience, Susanna has also organized exchange programs between her choirs and visiting choirs from South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Croatia, Australia and New Zealand.

Her latest venture in the choral scene was the establishment of the Young Choral Academy in Kuala Lumpur, aimed as a venue for choral lovers to learn more about choral music and a venue for young Malaysian composers and arrangers to compose more choral works.

She has been invited by Interkultur Foundation, Germany, to be the Jury at the 1st Asian Choir Games in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 2007. Her choir from SMK Sam Tet, Ipoh, has been invited by the Ministry of Education to represent Malaysia for the 2008 World Choir Games in Graz, Austria. Susanna is now venturing into the international choral scene. She has been appointed the Executive Committee Member of the Interkultur Foundation and is a member of International Federation of Choral Music (IFCM).