Imee Ooi

Ooi also composed and directed three highly acclaimed stage musicals: Siddhartha, Above Full Moon, and Princess Wen Cheng (aka Jewel of Tibet).

Biography

Early life

Ooi was born in Taiping, Malaysia to a musically inclined Hoklo family. Her grandfather, who was a writer and dramatist, emigrated to Malaysia from Guangdong, China. Ooi's mother was a piano teacher; Imee and her four siblings all learned piano. Ooi continued her study of piano and trained as a classical pianist.

Career

In the early 1990s, after training as a classical pianist, she followed her mother's example and in turn became a piano teacher, before moving into composition, creating film music for cinema or television series.

Buddhist vegetarian, she decided to specialize in Buddhist music, creating from sacred texts (dharanis, mantras, sutras) which she performs in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Mandarin, some are translated into English. She also composes musicals and performs in concerts.

In 1997 she founded a record label, I.M.M. Musicworks, to publish her music.

In 2015, she formed the male vocal group (8 singers aged between 25 and 38), named the Jing Shi Jin Gang which means "Guardians of the Dharma" with whom she toured internationally in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Imee is a discreet person. Her private life never comes up in the interviews she gives, preferring to talk only about her art and her spiritual path:

The power of music is very strong. We are trying to use music to convey positive messages. I’m a person who don't plan ahead. It is very much like Buddhist teaching – live for now, don't let the future tie you down, don't let the past trouble you and things will turn out well