Lai Yi Xuan
In a society that puts a great focus on academia, Lai Yi Xuan at 19 is already studying at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music and has been signed to a record label
Q: So Yixuan, I’m very curious, you’re so young and you play exceedingly well, where did this love for music come about?
A: Well, my family is a family that really loves music. My parents really love to play music around the house when I was younger. I was exposed to a lot of different kinds of music.
Q: So now your love for music turned into this love you have for performing, and when did that start and how did that come about?
A: When I started to go into Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts to have a deeper education in violin performance, they will make us do weekly master classes for all my peers and the parents, we have to go through that when I was really young and that trained me to perform and manage my stage fright. I used to be fearful of performing because of all the stage fright and everything, I thought maybe that wasn’t for me you know. I thought, since I had stage fright, maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a performer. But slowly I realised everybody has stage fright. So I thought that the way to do it was to overcome it, instead of avoiding it. If I really wanted to be a performer I should go all out to change this, you know, to change my perspective of performing, instead of avoiding it. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to be able to perform up to my own expectations. It feels like a challenge every time I go on stage, you know to me, I like to go through that challenge and I come out stronger like that, you know, and it always trains me to be much stronger inside.
Q: What is empowerment to you?
A: Empowerment to me is to be yourself. Because it takes courage, you know, to follow your gut feeling, and we should not let others direct our lives for us and we should create our own destiny.
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