Teachers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Principal

Flora Lim has accomplished for herself a distinguished career in music education together with a record of highly acclaimed piano performances. She has been actively involved in music education for more than 20 years. She is now the Director/Principal of Seimpi School of Music in Singapore and Malaysia, and the founder of the innovative music program, Music for the Intelligent Mind (MIM ).

Flora first received her music instruction at the age of six under Miss Loh Phaik Kheng, and Mr. Joe Emaung. After receiving her Fellowship of Trinity College of Music (FTCL), she was accepted into the prestigious Royal College of Music in London to pursue her postgraduate studies in piano performance and teaching. She learnt under Prof. Yu Chun Yee on her piano performance and under several distinguished ABRSM examiners namely, Patricia Caroll and Peter Element for her teacher's training. While in London, she performed in several music festivals and in 1992, she was awarded the Outstanding Prize in piano performance at the North London Music Festival. On her return to this region, she performed in the DBS Auditorium and gave solo recitals in the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur. Her exuberant performance has gained her critical acclaim.

She has been active in music lecturing and performance since her return. She started lecturing for a music degree twinning program in Sedaya College in 1993. In the same year, she compiled a selection of popular classical pieces in 'Improve Your Repertoire' published by Rhythm Publisher. Included together in the book is a recording of her interpretation of the pieces. In 1997, she led a very successful public charity concert, which earned a first page coverage in the second section of several newspapers in Kuala Lumpur.

In 1995, she took over as the Principal of Seimpi Music Academy, a music academy that she helped to set up back in 1991 in Kuala Lumpur. In the same year, she set up two diploma programs, which were called Associate of Seimpi Music Academy and Licentiate of Seimpi Music Academy. These two diploma programs have been successfully recognised and accredited by The Birmingham Conservatoire in the United Kingdom as an equivalent to their first and second year degree program in the Conservatoire. These are the first diploma programs in Malaysia to be recognised by a music conservatoire in England. With these programs, she successfully helped her students gain scholarships to study in England and many of her students are now professional teachers and performers.

Back in 1990, when Flora studied in London, she was fascinated by the capabilities of the many young talented performers that she met in London. Apart from the teacher training that she received in London, she started her research on early childhood music education, observing many courses specially catered for young beginners in London, Singapore and Malaysia. She has also engaged in serious discussions with several professors and examiners from London and Australia during her research. She realised that early childhood music education is essential in moulding one to be a fine musician. From the findings in her research, the many capabilities that she has observed from many young talented performers can be explained by the exciting and innovative training of the right brain and left brain. She started to fit the puzzles together, started her early childhood music course in Seimpi Music Academy, Kuala Lumpur in 1995, using an exciting and unique syllabus. Students who are trained in this course have all excelled in their examinations.

In 1999, Flora Lim came to settle in Singapore. After 3 years of private teaching, she again put all her teaching philosophies and experience together to set up a music course specially catered for young children in Singapore. This course is the Music for the Intelligent Mind (MIM ) series of music programs.

Seimpi School of Music has expanded to 5 branches in both Singapore and Malaysia and the MIM course have been implemented successfully in over 30 childcares and kindergartens in Singapore. In 2008, Flora designed a unique teachers’ training program, the Associate diploma of Music Pedagogy, aiming to help teachers and students who are interested to take music teaching as their career. It has gained a respectable reputation in Singapore as a training program which combines piano pedagogy and classroom pedagogy. She went on to set up the Certificate and the Diploma of Early Childhood Music in 2009 and also brought in the professional full time Associate and Licentiate diploma (which can lead to the undergraduate program in Birmingham Conservatoire upon successful audition) first started in Kuala Lumpur. 

She has appeared in Channel 8 and Channel U interviews back in 2006. In 2008, the mainstream Chinese paper ‘Lian He Zao Bao’ wrote a first page coverage about her work and Seimpi in their 2nd main section. She continues to aspire to bring more innovative and unique training programs to this region and hopes to see more new generation True Music Educators.