THE ESSENTIAL ARTIST
The veteran diplomat and Sing Jazz founder believes the pandemic will negatively impact the arts, but he plans to reverse it.
Most teenagers would listen to the countercultural music trend of their time, which usually veers between rock and roll and rap. Michael Tay listened to jazz. “My brother gave me my first hi-fi set and he loved jazz, so I did too,” laughs the 62-year-old.
Tay’s musical knowledge expanded as his career grew. His lifelong career as a diplomat brought him into contact with the deep cultural traditions of Korea, Japan, and Russia. Living in these culturally rich countries, he learned that a child who grows up surrounded by music, literature, poetry and plays will develop a creative impulse that will last throughout their lives and contribute to society.
Tay launched the Sing Jazz festival and the non-profit Foundation for the Arts and Social Enterprise when he returned to Singapore. Despite the success of the two since their inception in 2013 and the fact that there is an increase of options now, Tay believes that the country is still grappling with “society’s instinctive deprioritising of the arts”.
This became more evident when musicians started losing their livelihoods from gigs and concerts because of the pandemic. So far, we have not seen any signs of large-scale performances returning.
“Digitalisation won’t be the panacea we hoped for. Fundraising will suffer over time as the urgencies of the pandemic will further orient charitable giving towards social causes. We are at a tipping point now and how we move forward with the arts will determine Singapore’s development as a first-world society,” Tay says.
The cultural heavyweight believes that the best way forward is to integrate Singapore into the global arts landscape and export local talent to different markets. The Foundation has pursued this mission since its founding and it is one of its key pillars.
“We are already artists when we are born. Before becoming engineers, accountants or whatever career we choose, we are artists.”
Unlike many other institutions, the Foundation approaches fundraising from a venture capital lens. If an artist has a project he or she is keen to develop, Tay and his team will work to commercialise and export it. One of its latest and biggest initiatives to date is the 10-Year Music Commissioning Series, which the Foundation launched last month.
Each year, one Singapore-based music composer will be commissioned to compose a major work of at least 30 minutes. The first is Cultural Medallion recipient Kelly Tang, who will be working on an orchestral piece inspired by artworks from the National Gallery of Singapore.
In the years to come, Tay hopes to pursue other musical works, “including Chinese orchestral music, jazz compositions, a musical and even a rock opera!”
He continues: “We want to encourage the creation of new original music by staging concerts in Singapore, and then exporting it overseas. The objective is to create a canon of Singapore contemporary music. Getting corporations as patrons of the works would also enable us to build a patronage system for Singapore.”
Art, in its various forms, is an essential part of Tay’s life. “We are already artists when we are born. Before becoming engineers, accountants or whatever career we choose, we are artists. Growth and development should include the arts. I would love to shift the paradigm so that the arts are recognised as a critical part of being human.”