Cover Weish wears an Isabel Sanchis dress at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Round Triple Mystery Baguette watch set with rubies and diamonds
Weish wears an Isabel Sanchis dress at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Round Triple Mystery Baguette watch set with rubies and diamonds
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Part of a new generation of female musicians forging self‑authored careers across genres and platforms, weish inhabits the space between disciplines, blending music, dramatic writing and Hakka folk traditions into work that privileges substance over spectacle
During Singapore Art Week this January, weish seemed to be everywhere at once. She performed across three consecutive nights: the Art SG 2026 opening party at Marquee; Singapore Art Museum’s (SAM) 30th Anniversary Benefit at Dempsey; and a collaboration with Sonic Shaman, a Taiwanese experimental music festival grafted onto the city’s cultural calendar at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark.
The last, she admits, was her favourite—an encounter that brought together artists from across the region and Europe. “It really elevated the experience of music performances in that space,” she says. “Very, very cool.” This is quintessentially weish, also known as Chew Wei Shan. Over the years, her work has moved easily between intimate rooms and national platforms, underground venues and ceremonial stages. “My favourites are still the intimate shows,” she says, reflecting on the difference between closeness and spectacle. “You really can connect with an audience in a cosy space.” Large stages, she adds, demand another discipline: how to transmit emotion across distance without losing sincerity. That understanding has allowed her to traverse worlds that rarely overlap, from experimental gigs to performing her original composition Horizon at the National Day Parade in 2024, where schoolchildren sang along to melodies many would later describe as their first encounter with something different.
That instinct—to trust audiences rather than pander to them—has shaped a career that resists easy categorisation. Weish is often described as a multidisciplinary artist, a description she embraces with thoughtful discernment. “Yes, I do flit between or sometimes combine multiple disciplines,” she says. “But I’m a firm believer of simply serving the work, and only deploying a specific art form if it best encapsulates, deepens, or amplifies its storytelling.” Music remains her first language, but it has never been the only one. Depending on the story she is trying to tell, she moves between composition, performance, music directing, dramatic writing and sound design, choosing the form that offers the most honest connection.
Above Linying, Weish and Iman Fandi on the cover of the March 2026 issue of Tatler Singapore
Linying, Weish and Iman Fandi on the cover of the March 2026 issue of Tatler Singapore
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Her reach has been global. Her compositions have travelled from the Sundance Film Festival in the US to the Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan; she toured internationally as part of electronic duo .gif and prog‐math outfit sub:shaman. Yet her origin story is almost accidental. In 2012, she was helping a friend run an open mic at The Pigeonhole, a now-closed café-bar in Duxton that doubled as a bookstore and community space. When the scheduled band failed to show, she stepped onstage with a vocal looper she had been experimenting with at home. It was, she recalls, “strangely addictive”—her first taste of performing, improvised and unplanned, setting in motion a career that would eventually travel far beyond that intimate room.
Such intimate spaces—she singles out The Substation, Home Club and Blu Jaz for special mention, of which only the last remains today—once formed the backbone of the music ecosystem. Their disappearance, she says, has left emerging artists with little room to experiment or grow. “Singapore has very few live music venues left. For many young artists, their first stage is the Esplanade. There are a couple of newer independent spaces, but exorbitant operational costs today post huge challenges to their survival.” Without those smaller, non-intimidating rooms—once hotbeds where bands could try things out, fail without consequence and learn from mentors— musicians lose the chance to hone their stage presence and gradually become seasoned performers.
It was in these same intimate circuits that theatre first entered her practice—not as a departure from music, but as an extension of it. Her long-standing relationship with home-grown theatre company Checkpoint Theatre began through sound design and deepened through conversation, drawing on stories from her years as a secondary school literature teacher. In 2024, these experiences coalesced into Secondary: The Musical, an unconventional production for which she served as playwright, composer and music director.
“It began as a prompt from director and dramaturg Huzir Sulaiman,” she shares. “After three years of development with Checkpoint Theatre, it has become this mammoth work. We saw standing ovations every night, and hundreds of passionate reviews and letters. Many audience members were still teary-eyed in the Victoria Theatre lobby after the show, and many returned to see it a second or even third time. We are so happy to be restaging it this year.” The musical, which clinched Production of the Year and six nominations at The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards 2025, returns to the stage from April 9 to 26, with weish once again in the creative seat.
Above From far left: Linying wears Isabel Sanchis shirt, trousers at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Vanguard Curvex Cut Flower watch set with emeralds and diamonds; Iman wears Akris coat at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Round Triple Mystery watch set with sapphires and diamonds; Weish wears Isabel Sanchis top, trousers at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Round Triple Mystery Baguette watch set with rubies and diamonds
From far left: Linying wears Isabel Sanchis shirt, trousers at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Vanguard Curvex Cut Flower watch set with emeralds and diamonds; Iman wears Akris coat at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Round Triple Mystery watch set with sapphires and diamonds; Weish wears Isabel Sanchis top, trousers at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Round Triple Mystery Baguette watch set with rubies and diamonds
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Her most recent project, stray gods, presented at the Singapore International Festival of Arts in 2025, turns inward. In this new body of work, she explores the forgotten mountain songs of her Hakka heritage—folk melodies passed down through nomadic communities who once sang across vast distances to communicate with one another. When she first chanced upon them, she recalls feeling “so strangely connected”. Even as she continues to push towards a contemporary sound, she finds that “engaging with elements of my Hakka ancestry has given me new meaning”, surfacing naturally in the work as continuity rather than nostalgia.
With a full-length album built from the songs in stray gods in the works, making music on her own terms means remaining answerable first to the work itself. “It’s an old‐school mindset, I guess: you do your thing, stay true to yourself, and trust that if you’re sincere, people will find their way to you,” she says. “It may sound cliché, but it’s worked for me so far.”
It is this quiet insistence, carried across disciplines and stages, that places weish firmly within a new generation reshaping Singapore’s sound—not as a single identity, but as a living, evolving conversation.
Above Weish wears an Isabel Sanchis dress at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Round Triple Mystery Baguette watch set with rubies and diamonds
Weish wears an Isabel Sanchis dress at enVie de Pois, Franck Muller Round Triple Mystery Baguette watch set with rubies and diamonds
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Credits
Photography: Hans Goh
Fashion Direction: Adriel Chiun
Hair: Sha Shamsi using Kms (Linying); Grego using Revlon (Weish, Iman Fandi)
Make-Up: Wee Ming using Dior Beauty (Linying); Wu Yiqing using Rorrimu (Weish, Iman Fandi)
Photography Assistant: Anna-Lisa Tan, Darrel Ng
As Senior Editor of Tatler Singapore, Hashirin champions and refines the storytelling across platforms—curating and crafting compelling profiles, cover stories and features that spotlight visionaries shaping culture, business and impact. Driven by curiosity, she draws inspiration from the artists, changemakers and trailblazers she encounters through her work. Beyond the pages of Tatler, she is an avid supporter of local theatre and delights in seeking out art in every city she visits.
