Chun’en Ruth Lin and Lee Yan Chang

Singaporean Chun’en Ruth Lin is an active musician on both the French Horn and the Tenor Horn, and a passionate brass pedagogue. She has performed with local groups such as re:SOUND Collective, ADDO Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Music Makers, Windstars Ensemble, and Philharmonic Winds. With the Tenor Horn, she is Solo Horn of the Lion City Brass Band, which was established in 2015 to promote quality brass music in Singapore, and to contribute to the development of brass pedagogy and musicianship in Singapore and the region.

Her variety of performance experiences range from operas with the Kölner Symphoniker, to premiering new music for wind quintet at the Lange Nacht der Neuen Musik Düsseldorf, and performing on Parforce-Horns with the Detmolder Hornensemble. A keen chamber musician, her wind quintet was awarded the 3rd Prize in the Chamber Music Competition of the Society of Friends and Patrons of the Hochschule für Musik Detmold 2013. In addition are music projects as Solo Horn with the Youth Brass Band NRW (Nordrhein Westfalen state), culminating in the 3rd Prize in the first category of the 6th German Brass Band Championships.

As an educator, Ruth has taught for over a decade in various roles including Horn and Trumpet teacher at Jugendmusikkorps Avenwedde, – Stadt Gütersloh – e.V. under former Music Director Thiemo Kraas, brass teacher of the Instrumental Teaching Programme at United World College of Southeast Asia Dover Campus, and assistant instructor at the symphonic bands of Jurong Pioneer Junior College and Riverside Secondary School. She was also faculty member for Horn at the Wind Bands Association of Singapore’s (WBAS) Youth Band Festival 2016 and 2017.

Beginning with the Cornet and the Tenor Horn in her primary school brass band, she subsequently focused on the French Horn in secondary school. After majoring in it with a Bachelor of the Arts (Honours) at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts under the tutelage of Jamie Hersch, she continued at the Robert-Schumann-Hochschule Düsseldorf and at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, where she received a Masters of Music, Instrumental Pedagogy. Horn mentors from this period including Kathleen Putnam, Norbert Stertz and Michael Höltzel, and masterclasses with Horn professors such as Erich Penzel, Johannes Hinterholzer and Wolfgang Gaag significantly shaped her development. Teachers who spurred her on in pedagogical studies include Wolfgang Rüdiger, Reinhild Spiekermann and Wilfried Hanslmeier. Her dreams of playing the Tenor Horn again were realized through summer camps by the Bayerische Brass Band Academy (3BA), and she continues to actively promote this less known brass instrument.