Jia Hua is a member of the pioneer batch of YST graduates.

In his final semester at YST, he was tapped to serve as the Orchestra Manager of the Singapore Festival Orchestra, newly-formed by the National Arts Council to be the resident orchestra of the Singapore Arts Festival and the National Piano & Violin Competition.

Following graduation, he joined the Performing Arts Development team at NAC, where over the course of 3 years he was entrusted with key roles in a range of development programmes, including leading an assessment cycle of NAC’s Major Grant scheme for Singapore’s major arts companies across all art forms, the National Indian Music Competition, and the Malay Music Development Committee.

Post-NAC, Jia Hua resumed his role as Orchestra Manager of SFO, while concurrently leading Singapore’s first all-professional brass quintet B5Brass, teaching as an Adjunct Lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic, and working widely with numerous artists and arts organisations as a freelance performer, consultant, copywriter, translator, and project manager.

When the Singapore Arts Festival underwent a hiatus ahead of its eventual rebranding as the Singapore International Festival of Arts, Jia Hua led the formation of the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra as the spiritual successor of SFO.