A Singaporean percussionist who is active in music performance and education, Cheryl Ong regularly performs with avant rock group, The Observatory. She has also played with SA, a trio that fuses traditional Chinese instruments and electronics.
 
A recipient of the National Arts Council Arts Bursary, Cheryl graduated with a degree in Chinese Percussion from the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing. Though classically trained, Cheryl consistently struggles with the fact that classical music can be divisive and limited to its roles. Tired of being a mere technician, Cheryl has gone on to explore improvisational and experimental practices in recent years, hunting down new ideas and sounds. She’s always up for playing, bucking trends, and going for broke.
 
Her recent performances include a joint online performance with Scandinavian musicians, and other collaborative projects staged in Singapore, such as “Folly of a Garden” with the Arts Fission Dance company, “Lao Jiu- The musical” with The Theatre Practice, “Tribal Gathering: An alternative ensemble”, an incubative music programme at The Substation, and as one of the live performers in Zai Tang’s immersive “Spectre” installation at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts in 2017. Cheryl also features on the Syrphe label release, Not Your World Music: Noise in SouthEast Asia, created as a companion compilation to the namesake 2016 book by Cedrik Fermont & Dimitri della Faille.