The seaweed was split four ways. That is what Liang Yu Syuen remembers most about being in the Maha Bodhi School Band – not the trophies, not the stage, but four girls tearing a snack apart in the canteen between rehearsals, laughing at nothing in particular. 

"It may seem like nothing much," she says. "But it was everything to me back then." 

Yu Syuen, 21, graduated from Maha Bodhi School in 2017 and is now studying broadcast media at LASALLE. She still returns to play with the Alumni Band when her schedule allows. This year, the Singapore Youth Festival set piece happens to be the same one she played as a student – which means she now finds herself standing in the same school hall, guiding a younger girl through the same notes she once struggled with herself. 

Yu Syuen and her fellow alumni band members at a community performance.

"Today, I'm guiding this batch of juniors to play something I played 10 years ago." 

There was a time, of course, when none of this felt easy. Back in 2016, stepping onto the stage for the Arts Presentation for the first time, Yu Syuen was terrified. "It would be my first big competition at such a young age. My heart was beating non-stop." The nerves lifted almost as soon as the band played its first note – and that, she says, taught her something she has carried since. "The hardest part about anything is always starting it." 

But the stage was never really the point. What stayed with her was the bus ride back from the concert hall – the chatter, the giggling, the feeling that something difficult had been achieved together. The seaweed. The sweaty rehearsals. The ordinary in-between bits that don't make it into any programme booklet.

Yu Syuen with her bandmates during her school band days at Maha Bodhi. 

What grows between rehearsals

One of the juniors Yu Syuen now guides is Primary 6 student Juli Tan, who is preparing for the Arts Presentation herself. Juli joined the school band in Primary 3, drawn in after experiencing music through the school's LEAP programme the year before. She chose the euphonium because it "looked cool and interesting" – and then discovered, as most beginners do, that looking cool and sounding good are very different things. 

"When I first joined the band, I felt like giving up because it was hard to remember the notes," she says. 

Juli admits that playing the euphonium was harder than she expected.

She didn't quit. Gradually, band became less about getting the notes right and more about learning how to keep going when things felt difficult. Now a Band Leader, Juli says the toughest part of preparing for Arts Presentation is keeping up with all the practices. What carried her through was not just grit, but the people around her. "When I struggled to remember my parts, my section mates helped me through it." 

That dynamic – of struggling together, of being held up by the person next to you – is exactly what Yu Syuen means when she pushes back against the idea that band is primarily about performance. "Band students are extremely disciplined," she says.  

"Learning an instrument, reading notes and eventually playing together takes far more self-discipline, awareness and teamwork than people realise – especially for young children."

Juli says being a Band Leader has taught her patience, especially in learning that people move at different speeds.

Ms Ng Mui Ling, the band’s teacher-in-charge, puts it plainly, "Children get a lot more than just musical skill from playing in an ensemble. The 'hidden benefits' like learning teamwork and a sense of shared responsibility are just as important."

Why some students return

For Yu Syuen, coming back after graduation was never just about keeping a hobby alive. "As we grow older, people naturally take different paths," she says. "But playing in a band gives us a reason to come together again." The Alumni Band, she adds, is the kind of community that becomes harder to find once you leave school – a place to belong that exists outside of work or grades or whatever comes next.

Yilian (top left), Juli and Yu Syuen in the school’s Arts Theatrette.

Wu Yilian, who recently completed National Service and is waiting to enter university, understands this well. As President of the Maha Bodhi School Alumni Band, he returns every year to participate in MBSAB events. "We hope students feel such a strong sense of community that they will want to return after graduation and support the next batch, just as we did for them," he says. 

Nearly a decade after her first Arts Presentation, Yu Syuen is still here – not for a trophy or a title, but because some things turn out to be worth more than you realised when you were living them. A bus ride home. A piece of seaweed, split four ways. The particular feeling of finishing something hard, together.