Phan Ming Yen is a Board Member of Checkpoint Theatre.
An independent producer, writer and researcher, Phan Ming Yen has been involved in Singapore’s music scene variously as a music critic, journalist, writer, arts manager, producer and educator for the past 30 years. He has written on music in 19th century Singapore and also on the Syonan Symphony Orchestra during the Japanese Occupation for Cultural Connections, the journal of the Culture Academy of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth and a contributing writer to Singapore Soundscape.
As an educator, Phan has taught music writing and music promotional skills at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in the mid and late 2000s and Western Music in Singapore at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (YSTCM) from 2021 – 2022 and will be teaching a module on Social and Cultural Studies Through Music in the upcoming academic year at the conservatory.
Aside from his ongoing research on music during the Japanese Occupation, Phan is at present setting up a heritage and documentation centre on the history of a prominent tin ore dealer in Perak, Malaysia. Phan’s fiction and poetry has been published online in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and by Ethos Books and appeared a featured writer in the 2016 and 2022 editions of the Singapore Writer’s Festival.
Ming Yen is the former Chief Operating Officer of The RICE Company Limited and former director of the Global Cultural Alliance Limited.