GEORGE TOWN, April 19 – A Penang girl who grew up on Armenian Street in the George Town Heritage Zone, Chaing YiLing never imagined that she would become an accomplished soprano when she first took singing lessons for fun.

The 26-year-old had begged her parents to let her take singing lessons at the age of four and today, she has won many awards for her powerful rendition of the classics.

Back in Malaysia after many years abroad studying music and singing, Chaing made her debut recital first in Penang before going on to Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur recently.

The soft-spoken soprano has a strong passion for the classics and despite being told numerous times that she would have become more famous if she had taken the easier route of going into the pop and modern music industry, she stuck to the classics.

Chaing was one of the finalists in the Reginald Vincent Lieder Prize in UK in 2011 and 2013 and she won the Margaret Pascoe Singing Scholarship and Ella Cheshire Award for Soprano when studying in the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Two years ago, she won the Weingarten Competition in UK and went on to continue her postgraduate study in music in Hungary under the Joseph Weingarten Scholarship.

Here, Chaing shares how she embarked on a music career and her take on the music industry in Malaysia.

In her own words: