Chan Yee Shen is a young composer, arranger, and pianist who ventures across various genres. Born and raised in Malaysia, Yee Shen started playing piano at the age of 7. He learned how to play pop on keyboard in church at the age of 10. In his middle-high school years, Yee Shen joined a wind band and learned to play tuba, which sparked an interest in arranging. After graduating high school at 18, Yee Shen became more immersed in classical piano and took his ATCL Diploma Certificate. Determined to become a composer and arranger, Yee Shen learned jazz reharmonisation and improvisation by himself and started writing music by himself. He studied composition and arranging under Belinda Foo and Felix Phang at LASALLE College of the Arts, where he developed his musical aesthetics and honed his craft as a composer, and graduated in 2020.

​

His works were performed by the Manderling String Quartet as well as the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. In 2019 he produced the piano album “The Living Composers Series: Piano Anthology”, featuring LASALLE students' original piano music. Yee Shen also initiated and directed LASALLE's first composers' concert, 'The Living Composers Series: Preamble', which was successfully launched in January 2020. For the concert he curated the programme and composed and performed two original works.

 

Yee Shen has a good grasp of the classical styles and the pianistic aesthetics as he was classically trained on piano. His experience in wind band gave him a concrete foundation in orchestration. Yee Shen embraces different genres of music, such as pop, jazz, ethnic, film, atonal, and experimental, in his compositional style. Yee Shen likes interweaving elements of contemporary and classical music together. By writing intricate, close-knitted harmonies, he builds upon his classical music style by adding his own unique touch to create refreshing and pleasing contemporary sounds. Yee Shen hopes to keep improving in his craftsmanship and compose more great works to show to the world.