The Singapore Indian Orchestra & Choir (SIOC) is a 40-year-old performing arts group and one of the world’s largest semi-professional groups showcasing the richness of Indian music with its wide range of traditional and contemporary repertoire. Under the baton of Lalitha Vaidyanathan, PBM, SIOC has redefined the boundaries of Indian music through exciting collaborations with leading local and international composers as well as bringing the multi-racial cultural vibrance that Singapore is well known for to the local audience.
SIOC’s orchestral repertoire spans over 200 musical compositions ranging from traditional Carnatic, Hindustani to contemporary & multi-ethnic pieces. Our choir / choral group blends innovatively with acapella techniques and we are one of the first to break international barriers in this space.
Eminent Indian composers and local multi-ethnic composers have contributed greatly in showcasing SIOC’s richness in different genre of music such as traditional, western, multi-ethnic, global music, dance dramas. These include late MS Viswanathan, late L Vaidyanathan, TV Gopalakrishnan, Dr L Subramaniam, Rajkumar Bharathi, Bharadwaj, Mohan Vaidya, Rajesh Vaidya and Radha Vijayan.
Over the past 3 decades, SIOC has premiered many interesting concepts through productions like Vivaldi meets Thyagaraja, Live music for the silent movie Shiraz, Multi-ethnic collaboration called Soundwaves, Navarasa Ramayana using animated presentation and the dance drama Mystic 7 showing the 7 steps of the Hindu marriage.
In addition to our regular sold-out local performances at esteemed venues in Singapore such as Esplanade, Victoria Theatre, Kallang theatre etc, SIOC has been privileged to have been invited to many international festivals such as performances at the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, Cervantino International Festival at Mexico, The International Choral Festival at Portugal as well as other performances at India, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Sweden, Macau, Hongkong, Australia, Thailand, Japan. SIOC also has two CDs to its credit – ‘Ghana Varshini’ (1997) and ‘Sonic Orders in ASEAN Music’ (2000).
In 2016, SIOC also participated in the Singapore International Choral Festival where culturally diverse choirs from around the world compete. SIOC clinched the Gold and Silver in the Folk and Classical categories respectively. SIOC has also won the First Prize twice in National Indian Music Ensemble competition organized by the National Arts Council.
In keeping with the times, SIOC has also recently ventured into digital productions partnering IndianRaga, one of the world’s largest digital platforms for Indian performing arts. Two of its recent digital productions showcased on IndianRaga have garnered more than 0.5 million views worldwide.
SIOC has also striven to give back to the community and actively contributed to music education & research through Ministry of Education and also assisted in the music digitalisation efforts of the National library board.
SIOC now also has its youth wing called the Singapore Indian Youth Orchestra and Choir. This has been formed specifically with a motive to nurture the next generation of artists to perform in an orchestra and choir ensemble. We are excited to already have many young artists from the age of 15 to 23 who are part of this team seeding the pathway for future generation of artists of SIOC.
It has been a privilege for SIOC to have enthralled its audiences for over 36 years and be a pivotal part of Singapore’s performing arts landscape. SIOC looks forward to the continued support and patronage of art lovers.
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Local highlights include performances at:
Overseas performance highlights include:
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