A young home-grown erhu musician, Deborah Siok has performed extensively in the local music scene and has won top prizes in competitions organized by the National Arts Council as well as the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.

Deborah first started learning the electric keyboard when she was 3 years old and later the piano at the age of 7. Upon joining her primary school’s Chinese Orchestra, she started learning the erhu when she was 9 under the tutelage of erhu educator and musician Zhang Yuming. A recipient of the NAFA Merit Award, Deborah graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours in 2019. Besides being concertmaster of the NAFA Chinese Chamber Ensemble during her time there, Deborah was also a key player in the Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra (SNYCO) since joining it in 2016, and she was the erhu principal player during her latter years with the orchestra. Since graduating from NAFA, Deborah has been under the tutelage of SCO Concertmaster Li Baoshun, and she has also received guidance from notable erhu performers and educators such as Yan Jiemin, Zhang Zunlian, Zhao Hanyang, Duan Aiai, Huo Yonggang, Wang Ying, as well as Xue Ke.

Deborah was selected to perform her first concerto, Wang I-Yu’s The Blue Planet – Earth with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in 2018 as part of the SNYCO’s annual concert, Dauntless Spirit. Later that year, she was offered the SCO Musician Fellowship and she went on to clinch the First Prize in the Erhu Open category of the 2018 National Chinese Music Competition held by the NAC.