Dr Eugene Seow

Dr Eugene Seow is a lecturer, supervisor, and researcher working across contemporary music, higher education pedagogy, and artistic research. His teaching and research focus on ensemble musicianship, aural fluency, rhythm pedagogy, assessment, and the translation of embodied musical practice into rigorous academic inquiry. He is particularly interested in how performance knowledge, listening, judgement, and creative process can be articulated clearly within higher education.

Eugene teaches and supervises across undergraduate and postgraduate contexts in contemporary music, pedagogy, and practice-led research. His work spans performance, curriculum design, evaluative judgement, creative health, and interdisciplinary inquiry, with a particular emphasis on helping students develop strong research questions grounded in lived artistic practice.

His current research explores how musical motion, ensemble interaction, listening, and assessment operate across performance and educational settings. He is especially interested in supporting students whose projects sit at the intersection of creative practice and academic writing, including research-creation, reflective practice, pedagogy-focused inquiry, and music-based interdisciplinary work. His supervision style is structured, supportive, and development-oriented, with a strong emphasis on clarity, rigour, and helping students find a language for what they already know in practice.

Eugene teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate music programmes, with experience in principal study, ensemble, musicianship, pedagogy, academic writing, and research supervision. At LASALLE, he teaches contemporary music and supervises undergraduate dissertation projects. He also teaches and supervises postgraduate and undergraduate students at Singapore Raffles Music College, where his work includes pedagogy, critical perspectives, creative workshopping, and master’s-level project supervision.

Beyond formal classroom teaching, Eugene works across wider higher-education and conservatoire-adjacent contexts. These include guest teaching at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, ensemble tutoring with the Centre for the Arts (CFA) at the National University of Singapore through NUS Voices, and facilitation within the UAS IN-depth module, part of the UAS Common Curriculum. He has also contributed to ensemble coaching in NTU contexts, including work with NTU CAC Jazz and Blues. Across these settings, his teaching approach combines artistic depth with clear academic framing, helping students connect performance, reflection, research design, and communication.

He is particularly interested in helping students develop stronger musicianship, clearer critical language, and more confident links between practice, process, and scholarly inquiry.

Eugene’s research and professional expertise sit at the intersection of contemporary music practice, higher education, and practice-led inquiry. His work focuses on ensemble musicianship, rhythm pedagogy, aural fluency, embodied learning, and judgement-based assessment in music education.

His areas of expertise include contemporary music pedagogy, groove and time-feel, listening and musicianship training, practice-led curriculum design, evaluative judgement, and assessment in higher education. He is also interested in creative health, belonging, identity, and the role of music pedagogy in supporting student engagement and resilience.

More broadly, his research examines how musical motion, ensemble interaction, sound, and interpretive judgement can be generated, perceived, taught, and evaluated across performance, listening, and educational contexts. He welcomes interdisciplinary work in which music intersects with pedagogy, embodiment, reflective practice, the creative process, and research-creation.

Eugene’s methodological approach is primarily practice-led, interpretive, and qualitative. He works with forms of inquiry that are well-suited to artistic practice and higher education, especially where tacit, embodied, or process-based knowledge needs to be made visible and discussable.

His methodological interests include practice-led research, narrative inquiry, reflective practitioner inquiry, case study, qualitative interviewing, artefact- and process-informed analysis, and pedagogical design inquiry. He is particularly interested in approaches that help students and researchers articulate how creative decisions, musical judgement, and artistic processes can function as legitimate forms of research evidence.

His work is also informed by embodied and enactive perspectives on music-making, particularly regarding listening, performance, ensemble interaction, and assessment. In supervision, he helps students select methods that are both academically defensible and genuinely appropriate to the realities of their practice.

Eugene’s current research develops a practice-led programme in contemporary music education focused on how musical understanding is generated, perceived, and evaluated across performance, listening, and higher education contexts. His projects sit at the intersection of musicianship, pedagogy, assessment, and artistic research, with ongoing links to contemporary professional practice.

Current and recent projects include:

• Rhythm pedagogy and decolonising aural practice, with particular attention to global groove systems, cyclicity, plural listening, and genre-inclusive curriculum design
• Aural fluency and plural-modal listening, examining how contemporary musicians can be trained to hear across rhythmic, modal, timbral, and intercultural systems rather than through a single tonal-metric norm
• Ensemble fluency, groove, and musical motion, including work on pocket, time-feel, articulation, coordination, and embodied ensemble interaction in contemporary performance settings
• Patch literacy and timbral decision-making in contemporary ensemble practice, exploring how keyboard sound design and instrumental role-awareness function as core musicianship competencies
• Judgement and validity in arts assessment, focusing on how tacit musical expertise, evaluative judgement, and practice-based knowledge can be made academically defensible in higher education
• Creative health, belonging, and identity in music pedagogy, with case-based work on listening, participation, confidence, and cultural belonging in tertiary music learning
• Practice-led supervision and assessment frameworks for contemporary music higher education, including methodological guidance for undergraduate research-creation and performance-based inquiry

His research is also informed by ongoing professional practice, including intercultural ensemble work, large-ensemble collaboration, and current teaching and coaching across the Singapore higher education landscape.

Selected publications

• More Than Just Piano: Patch Literacy as a Core Competency in Contemporary Ensemble Practice. College Music Symposium, 2026
• When Formal Criteria Fail: Judgment and Validity in Arts Assessment. Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2026
• Designing Genre-Inclusive Diploma Pathways in Contemporary Theory: A Practice-Led Curriculum Framework for an Independent Awarding Body. Asia-Pacific Journal for Arts Education, 2026
• The Intentional Pocket Project: A Jazz-Informed Workshop Series for Emerging Ensemble Musicians. Jazz Education in Research and Practice, 2026
• Creative Health Through Music Pedagogy: Case Studies in Identity, Listening, and Cultural Belonging in Higher Education. International Journal of Arts Education, 2025
• Decolonising the Rhythm Curriculum: Integrating Global Groove Practices in Undergraduate Aural Skills. Music Education Research, 2025

A fuller list of publications and scholarly work is available via my website and Google Scholar.

I am interested in supervising undergraduate and postgraduate research projects in music practice, performance-based inquiry, and practice-led or research-creation work. I am particularly happy to supervise projects related to:

• ensemble musicianship, groove, rhythm, timing, and coordination
• aural skills, listening, musicianship, and auditory training
• contemporary music pedagogy and curriculum design
• practice-led research and reflective creative practice
• embodied learning, rehearsal process, and performance preparation
• assessment, evaluative judgement, and feedback in arts education
• creative health, identity, belonging, and student experience in music education
• interdisciplinary projects involving music, education, embodiment, process, or artistic reflection

I am especially interested in working with students who need support translating creative practice into a clear research question, methodology, and academically rigorous written form. My supervision style is structured, supportive, and attentive to both conceptual clarity and the realities of artistic work.

Eugene’s professional expertise spans higher music education, artistic research, curriculum design, supervision, and contemporary performance practice. He works across undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, dissertation and capstone supervision, practice-led research design, reflective documentation, and the translation of embodied artistic knowledge into academically rigorous forms.

His expertise includes curriculum and syllabus development in contemporary music, such as aural skills, theory, ensemble pedagogy, assessment design, and genre-inclusive pathways. He also works in ensemble coaching and rhythm-section pedagogy across drum set, bass, keyboard, and contemporary small-group performance, alongside assessment, moderation, and evaluative judgement in higher education and examining contexts. Continuing his activity as a performer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist informs his work with students whose projects span artistic process, performance, pedagogy, and research.

Eugene’s recent work spans higher education, interdisciplinary facilitation, ensemble coaching, and contemporary performance. He currently works across teaching, supervision, guest lecturing, workshop facilitation, and ensemble development in Singapore’s tertiary arts ecosystem.

Selected recent projects and activities include:

• Guest lecturing at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music
• Facilitating the UAS IN-depth module across pathways, including Artist as Futurist, Artist as Experimenter, Artist as Placemaker, and Artist as Commentator
• Ensemble tutoring with NUS Voices under the Centre for the Arts (CFA), National University of Singapore
• Ensemble coaching in NTU contexts, including NTU CAC Jazz and Blues
• Coaching for the Ministry of Education Inter-School Jazz Big Band
• Ongoing artistic work in intercultural and contemporary ensemble settings, including selected collaborations with The TENG Company
• Continued conference, invited-talk, and practice-led research activity in higher music education

Eugene’s public-facing work connects higher music education with performance, mentoring, and wider cultural participation. Alongside teaching and supervision, he remains active in workshops, ensemble coaching, professional performance, and public writing on music, pedagogy, and creative practice.

This includes intercultural ensemble work, workshops and masterclasses in rhythm pedagogy and ensemble fluency, student-facing mentoring through rehearsal coaching and performance preparation, and public writing on arts education, resilience, pedagogy, and practice-led creative work. He is especially interested in projects that connect artistic practice with educational, intercultural, or wellbeing-oriented aims.

I am interested in supervising arts projects that are music-led, sound-led, performance-led, or developed through practice-based and interdisciplinary approaches.

I am particularly open to projects involving contemporary music performance and ensemble creation, rhythm and groove, listening and embodied musical practice, research-creation, reflective arts practice, sound and timbral design, workshop-based or educational arts projects, and community-facing or wellbeing-oriented music work. I am especially well-suited to projects where students need help turning a strong artistic idea into a coherent process, critical reflection, and a clearly communicated outcome.

Selected achievements, qualifications, and distinctions

• Doctor of Music Education, Liberty University
• Doctor of Music in Contemporary Performance, European-American University
• Master of Music in Jazz Studies: Performance Track, Queens College, City University of New York
• Bachelor of Music in Jazz Composition and Professional Music, summa cum laude, Berklee College of Music
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
• Fellow of the London College of Music (FLCM)
• Fellowship (Honours) in Composition, Victoria College of Music and Drama [FVCM(Hons)]
• Licentiate of Trinity College London in Drum Kit, Distinction (LTCL)
• Certificate in Professional Performance (Percussion), Distinction (CIPP)
• Selected recognitions include the Duke Ellington Award, Benny Golson Award, Steve Gadd Award, Best of Jazz Composition, and Blue Man Group New York Drum-Off semi-finalist