It would be difficult to discuss Penang’s classical music scene without mentioning Datuk Woon Wen Kin, founding president of the Penang Symphony Society, established in 1981, and leader of the Penang Symphony Orchestra (PSO), Penang Wind Orchestra (PWO) and Penang Junior Orchestra (PJO).
His list of achievements and accolades is laudable, spanning from one corner of the globe to the other. But before all the success, Woon was a shipping clerk and then a full-time tuition teacher to school students.
His life took a turn when he managed to convince his father to send him to the Trinity College of Music in London in 1963. “It happened that my sister was a very good pianist. She wanted to go to England to study music and I thought, what about me? So, my father said OK, you two can go,” Woon remembers.
After completing his studies, Woon became the only Asian to secure a position in the London Opera Centre. However, after two successful years in that orchestra, his father beckoned him home. “It was a very hard decision – I had established myself as a player in the Western continent, which was not easy. I would be coming back to a (musical) ‘desert’. But my father was not well and my sister asked me to return,” says Woon.
His father passed on less than nine months after his return.
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