JON LIN CHUA
COMPOSER
Apart from her work as a composer, Jon Lin is also passionate about passing on her skills and knowledge to aspiring musicians. She has had experience teaching in both Rochester, New York, as well as in Singapore.
Jon Lin is currently a lecturer (adjunct faculty) at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), and also teaches composition, aural skills, and also music analysis privately. She has also taught at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, as well as the Eastman Community Music School in Rochester, New York, where she gave private instruction in composition, advanced analysis, as well as in eartraining and sightsinging. In addition, she co-taught the introductory aural skills class with Dr. Margaret Henry, covering the rudiments of solfege and scale degrees, tonal melodic sightsinging and dictation (with simple modulation), rhythmic training (simple and compound meters), interval identification, triads identification, clef reading and transposition.
She served as instructor of theory and sightsinging for the Music Horizons programme, a programme targeted at highschoolers aspiring to major in music in college, as part of Summer@Eastman, a summer institute affiliated to the Eastman School of Music. In this programme, she taught the following classes: the advanced aural skills class, covering atonal melodic sightsinging and dictation, advanced rhythmic training (complex meters and polyrhythms), four-part harmonic dictation with modulations, chromatic harmony, clef reading and transposition; the intermediate aural skills class, covering solfege and scale degrees, tonal melodic sightsinging and dictation, intermediate rhythmic training (simple and compound meters), interval identification, and identification of basic triads; the introductory counterpoint class, covering species counterpoint writing in two parts; and the introductory theory class, covering note reading, key signatures, simple and compound meters, scales and modes, intervals, triads, and basic chord functions.
In addition to her work in engaging with pre-college level education in music theory and aural skills, she has also developed a set of pedagogical exercises in advanced rhythmic training covering complex tuplets, polyrhythms, and irrational meters, for professional musicians who want to challenge themselves and venture into more rhythmically complex contemporary repertoire. These exercises were published in the Eastman School of Music Honors Track Aural Musicianship Training Anthology (from Fall 2016 onwards), compiled by Prof. Matthew Curlee.
She has also given talks to composition students in the School of the Arts (SOTA) as well as in NAFA.