Sulwyn Lok is a composer and music director working between Singapore and New York, across orchestral, Chinese and Asian instrumental, screen, and interdisciplinary worlds.

Much of Sulwyn’s work begins with inherited musical traditions and asks what they can become now. Less interested in fusion than in conversation, the music explores what changes when different musical languages meet, and what can remain unmistakably their own.

Commissioning bodies include the New York State Council on the Arts, National Arts Council Singapore, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Recent works include Three Dancers, a double concerto for guitar, zhongruan, and orchestra commissioned for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s 2026 National Day Concert, and Seeing the Kites Again 又见风筝, a guzheng concerto commissioned by Mapletree as the set work for the Senior Category finals of the Singapore Chinese Music Competition. Earlier orchestral work includes Waves, Towards the Lands We Call Home 波靖南溟, written for the combined Singapore Chinese Orchestra and Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra, drawing on migration histories and musical traditions encountered along the routes that shaped Singapore.

As composer, music director, and co-creator, Sulwyn conceived Harmonies Across the Seas 《四海闻音》 for the closing gala of the 2025 Singapore Chinese Music Festival. In 2026, the production travels from Singapore to the China Shanghai International Arts Festival and the Silk Road International Arts Festival in Xi’an, bringing an ensemble of Chinese, Indian, Southeast Asian, and Western instruments into a continuously unfolding concert work.

Interdisciplinary projects extend beyond the concert hall. 8 Immortals Hop, created with Arts Fission under the artistic direction of Angela Liong, reimagines Chinese wind and percussion traditions as a contemporary Singaporean urban voice through music and dance. Morning of the World, conceived across Singapore and Indonesia, brings Chinese instruments, cello, gamelan, electronics, and responsive visuals into a meditation on cycles of time, identity, rupture, and renewal.

Sulwyn is also composer and music director for the Asian Civilisations Museum’s Sacred Caves: Dunhuang, Buddhism, and the Silk Road, developed with the Dunhuang Academy. Drawing on surviving musical sources, the exhibition soundscape re-composes fragments from the past through dizi, bansuri, yangqin, ruan, cello, saron, bonang, and percussion.

Sulwyn’s work moves between concert halls, museums, film, and media, reaching audiences in the hundreds of millions through Tencent’s documentary series Breakfast in China. Scores have appeared at the Cannes, Busan, and New York Asian film festivals, including the feature We Can Save the World!!!. Across these forms, screen and media music remain part of the same artistic practice: another space for music to carry stories, histories, and emotional connection to audiences far beyond the concert hall.

In 2026, Sulwyn is a featured composer at China’s Dunhuang Cup. Current roles include Music Producer at The TENG Company, Resident Composer of the Singapore Ruan Ensemble and Reverberance, and Creative Director of Loka Lore Music. Sulwyn holds a Master of Music in Screen Scoring from New York University, supported by IMDA’s Singapore Digital Scholarship, and graduated as valedictorian and First Class Honours from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.