CHAIRMAN'S
MESSAGE

It is my profound honour to welcome you to the International Youth Chinese Orchestra Summit 2026 — IYCOS 2026 — the first summit of its kind, hosted at the National University of Singapore.

The Chinese orchestra carries centuries of civilisational memory in its timbre and its temperament. It has long been cherished as a custodian of heritage — and rightly so. But there is another dimension to this ensemble that IYCOS 2026 wishes to honour: its capacity for the genuinely new. Rooted in folk vitality and refined artistry, it holds acoustic and expressive possibilities that each generation must discover afresh, on its own terms.

This is the spirit IYCOS 2026 is built upon. We bring together young musicians not only to perform and to learn, but to experiment, to question, and to imagine. What can this ensemble do that no other ensemble in the world can? What new repertoire, new forms, new collaborations are waiting to be created by this generation?

Through our youth camp, showcase performances, and cross-cultural exchanges, you will encounter musicians who approach these same instruments — and these same questions — from different traditions and vantage points. Among them are Singapore’s own young talents, whose voices and perspectives add a vital nuance to this summit. Their participation reflects the unique role Singapore plays as a meeting ground of cultures, and as a home where tradition and innovation coexist in harmony. Let those encounters provoke you creatively. The most important conversations at this summit may not be the ones in the concert hall, but the ones that happen around it.

We hold a firm conviction at IYCOS 2026: that the next chapter of Chinese orchestral music will not be written by institutions alone, but by young artists willing to inhabit tradition and innovation simultaneously — to be, at once, deeply rooted and radically open.
I hope you leave Singapore not only with new skills and lasting friendships, but with a transformed sense of what this art form is capable of — and of what you are capable of within it.

Together, let us not only preserve and perform. Let us invent.