About

Jordan Wei is a Singaporean jazz musician born into a musical family. His ethnicity is Chinese Foochow with bits of Indonesian and French blood but speaks English only. Son of Major Tonni Wei (Singapore Armed Forces Bands) and Patricia Goh (Straits Times Music Columnist). Grandson of renowned violinist Goh Soon Tioe (Singapore Symphony Orchestra) and nephew of Vivien Goh (Singapore Symphony Orchestra). List goes on and gets as complicated as father’s sister’s husband’s son’s brother plays guitar. You get the picture.

Jordan started his musical training at the age of 5, taking classical piano lessons which he sometimes found uninteresting so he switched to blues and jazz at 16. The only piano teacher he remembers is Wong Sow Mui aka “Mrs Lim the piano teacher.” He taught himself bass and drums in church when he was 8 and has been serving in church music ministry ever since. He learnt guitar from overpriced books and google websites when he was 13, which was also the age he began composing and transcribing simple pop songs. This usually took him 6 hours but today he does one song in approximately 5 minutes.

During secondary school, he joined the Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road) chapel band where he learnt about chords, group playing and musicians’ egos. At this time, he also played bassoon in the Singapore Youth Training Orchestra as extra-curricular activity (ECA) and put up with the people there long enough to get decent ECA school grades.

After ‘O’ Levels, Jordan decided to do his ‘A’ levels overseas as he flunked his Chinese exam paper and was hence not eligible to study at a local junior college. The UK school semester started in September so Jordan began jazz piano lessons with Rita Sze and began practicing 6 hours a day for the next 9 months of free time he needed to kill.

In the UK, Jordan played bassoon at the Junior Guildhall School of Music on Saturdays, where he got traumatized really badly and swore off classical music forever. He somehow managed to get grade 8 bassoon in the process.

After his ‘A’ levels, Jordan served in the Singapore Armed Forces as a bassoonist for the central band, and pianist and arranger for the combo band too. One of his compositions “Axiomatic” was featured in the band’s regular chamber music concerts. His army stint let him learn a lot more about “getting roasted when sight reading new music you have to play in 2 days time”

Just as he was completing his national service, he started performing at various wedding events, hotels, etc. He then left Singapore to pursue a BA Jazz degree and got befuddled stares from people when he told them what he was studying. His studies took place in Middlesex University, which was terrible at administration (and still is) so instead he learnt a great deal about jazz from fellow classmates and the local jazz musicians there; mostly about how to procrastinate. Jordan met his wife in a practice room during his studies and found out she was a classical musician so now he still has to play classical music sometimes when she plays violin. He stayed another year in the University to complete his MA in Jazz Performance.

After finishing up his Masters in Middlesex University, he returned to Singapore and found it extremely hard to land jobs for about a year, even though he had a 1st Class Honours in BA Jazz and an MA Jazz postgraduate degree with Merit.

Since then however, his musical escapades, which started from eating lunch in music school practice rooms, to uploading YouTube music video content, to playing for overly anxious wedding couples, to looking for where the damn piano was at hotels he had to perform in, eventually led him to play for some of the biggest names in the Asian Mandopop scene. These include superstars such as Amei, David Tao, JJ Lin, Wang Lee Hom and more, even though he had not listened to any of their music prior to playing for them.

In 2011, Jordan formed “Jordan Wei and The Jazz Brotherhood”, which is a community of musicians he already plays and works with regularly; but was named out of necessity, as clients at various events were asking him what his band name was. Jordan thought that this band name would be much better than “3 random musicians”. He also thought that this bio would be way much shorter. In 2016, he renamed his band to the “Jordan Wei Trio” as it sounded more classy, and so that the band could get paid better.

Some of Jordan’s career highlights include:

– Authoring & Publishing “Finger Tips”, an instructional jazz piano book (2018)
– Re-arranging Amei’s “Lonely Tequila” for her ASMeiR World Tour (2022-2025)
– Arranging for Jeremy Monteiro’s Jazz Association Singapore (JASS) (2019-2021)
– Composing for Nanyang Technological University’s Convocation Song (2017-2018)
– Appointed Head of Contemporary Faculty at Singapore Raffles Music College (2021)
– Eating a whole cake (circa 2015)
– Posing for random photoshoots, conducting jazz and pop piano workshops and constantly telling people that he can’t give a rough gauge of how long it takes for one to improve on piano, as it boils down to how much time they practice. (2010-current)

Jordan is currently on tour with Amei’s ASMeiR Concert World Tour, and in his pockets of free time whilst in Singapore, he spends it organizing the daily schedules of his 2 kids, discussing where and what to eat with his wife, performing in bars and clubs around town and inspiring the generation of students who want to get good without practicing.

Click here to find out more about his unique jazz piano lessons! Or contact him to ask what keyboards he uses, where he performs and enquire about him making a fire arrangement of your tune. Click the link. Do it. Do it now!