Featured Teacher

From a Singapore Badminton Court to the Opera Stages of New York

A conversation with Sam Ng — voice & piano

We feel truly fortunate to have a teacher of Sam's caliber at Willan Academy, an internationally accomplished performer who brings the same care and warmth to a first piano lesson as he does to the opera stage.

Every artist has an origin story. Few are as unlikely as Sam's. Long before he was singing the role of Hoffmann on a New York stage, he was a ten year old boy in Singapore, standing on a badminton court, being told by his coach that he was not brave enough to stay on the team.

“I was a scared and unathletic kid that got stage fright and had a severe difficulty trusting that I would play well,” Sam remembers. When he asked to be placed on reserve for an upcoming match, his coach removed him from the team entirely the next day.

“I was crushed and reminded about the brutal insufficiency of my abilities,” Sam recalls of that day.

What happened next has come to define his entire artistic life. Two days before he was cut from the badminton team, Sam had taken an exam for a mandatory music class. While his classmates played the recorder, he chose to sing instead. He did well enough that his teacher offered him a spot in the school choir without an audition, an offer he could not accept at the time, since he was still committed to badminton. When that commitment ended, he remembered the invitation and took it.

The choir did not come without cost. In Singapore at the time, rigid cultural norms dictated that music was a feminine pursuit, while sports were seen as the masculine standard. Sam recalls being called derogatory names by friends and even family members for choosing to sing rather than play a sport—told directly that music was "for girls" and that a boy should be doing something more masculine. He stayed with it anyway. By his first competition, he had fallen in love with music entirely, drawing inspiration in those early years from video game composers like Hans Zimmer, Jeremy Soule, and Matt Uelmen, whose grandeur and atmosphere he found echoed in classical music.

A Path Built on Believing in Himself

Sam’s road to becoming a professional opera singer was rarely straightforward, and it was built through persistence rather than a smooth or conventional trajectory. He was rejected twice by Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, setbacks he describes as deeply painful. He was also told by others that auditioning abroad would be difficult and perhaps unwise for him.

He pursued it anyway. Recognizing that four years of tuition for an undergraduate degree abroad was financially out of reach, Sam made a deliberate strategic choice: he completed an undergraduate degree in Theater at the National University of Singapore first, a discipline he chose specifically because of its foundational relationship to opera, before successfully auditioning for a Master’s degree at Mannes School of Music in the US, a considerably more resourceful and less costly path to the same destination.

“I made it work in spite of what people told me I could or could not do,” he says, “because I believed I had it in me.”

That belief carried him first across Asia and Europe, where as a young choir member he performed in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the age of 13, and later returned to perform in France and Italy as an adult, singing the roles of Faust and Des Grieux with Classic Lyric Arts. Of performing on the continent that produced so many of the composers he grew up studying, Sam describes the experience in almost mythic terms.

“It is like reading a novel and picturing a fantasy world that you love, and one day suddenly finding yourself in that world and being one of the characters of the novel for that brief moment of being on stage,” he says. “It is something very magical.”

That same conviction carried him to New York City, where he has since built a performing career marked by lead roles across some of the city’s most respected opera companies and festivals, including New York City Opera, Teatro Grattacielo, Bronx Opera, and Canto Vocal Programs, appearing in venues ranging from Bryant Park to the Phoenicia Festival. Of the city itself, Sam speaks with the same conviction that carried him through his early rejections.

“New York gave me a chance to plant my feet in the ground and make a stand for what I believe to be true and what I believe to matter most in what I do, and to be able to do so with no fear of judgement,” he says.

“You’re one in a million, but you matter no less than ever before here.”

Why He Teaches

Alongside his performing career, Sam has taught voice, piano, and music theory across Singapore and New York, and today he is a member of the Willan Academy faculty. I hear again and again from students how much they love working with him, and from parents how he has genuinely inspired their children, not just to sing or play better, but to believe in themselves.

"I had a lot of teachers who were damaging to my self esteem growing up," he says. "I want to make a difference in that regard. I want these kids to know that learning is one of the most precious things in the entire world, and to enjoy that process."

Teaching in New York, he says, has reshaped how he thinks about music education itself. Coming from a culture where success was often measured in grades and certifications, he has come to see music instead as something students turn to precisely because it is not reducible to a number on a page.

"Everybody has something to say, everybody has something to show, and everybody has something to give," Sam tells his students who feel self conscious in their very first lesson. "What you have to say, show, and give are worth listening to and worthy of people's attention and trust."

A Milestone Evening

Sam performed at Willan Academy's 10th Anniversary Concert at Merkin Hall on May 9th 2026, an afternoon he describes with real tenderness. He sang Jules Massenet's Élégie, joined by Beatriz Martin on cello and Liza Wu on piano, and the room fell completely still. Our entire community was in awe of his voice that evening, a moment many are still talking about.

"One moment you're part of a microscopic 'motion' in that experience, perhaps teaching a one on one lesson, but this microscopic moment creates a tiny echo," he says. "When I sat in Merkin Hall watching the rehearsals go on for the 10th Anniversary Concert, I felt like I was a part of that larger thrumming form. It made me understand deeper what music can be about."

Looking ahead, Sam hopes to keep singing the operatic roles he loves most, and to keep being part of what he calls "this ever expanding world of music," in every form that takes.