Jet Kye Chong

About

Jet Kye Chong is an award-winning Perth-based percussionist, composer and
researcher who was also Principal Percussion with the Australian Youth Orchestra in 2020. As a member of AYO Momentum Ensemble in 2025, he has toured nationally. Moreover, he has performed concerts across Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. As a percussionist, Chong won the Malaysia Percussion Festival Performance Prize with his own work ‘Rev 3’ and is a two-time winner of the People’s Choice Award for the Vose Memorial Concerto Prize.

He has produced 5-star award-winning Fringeworld shows and toured internationally with his band “The Hár” in the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He recorded works of Myburgh for Australian and UK labels and recorded with Australian Baroque for ABC Classic.

Chong holds a Bachelor of Philosophy in Mathematics and Statistics, and Music Specialist Studies (Composition/Percussion), with First Class Honours. His research thesis ‘Predicting Marimba Stickings with Neural Networks’ won the 2020 Dr Vincent Harry Cooper Memorial Prize, the 2022 Statistical Society of Australia Louise Ryan Best Presentation Award and was recently published in the Australasian Joint Conference in AI proceedings.

Momentum Leaders 2025: “What does this project mean to you?”

This project is to me a reflection on how we, as a cohort
of young Australians, try to process the daily
technicolour rollercoaster that is the world. You can’t say
everything. Rather it feels like you can hardly begin to say
anything at all. In taking this opportunity to connect with
each other through telling the little stories and making
art rather than shouting with the share button, this
project is our lens on the daily experience.

“What’s an Untold Story in this project that really speaks to you- and
why?”

In chaotic moments of this work is an imprint of a story about
distraction and attention, hearing and listening. Art, and music
especially, brings my focus to this distinction in a creative context, but
in today’s social, technological and political climate, it is increasingly
important and seemingly decreasingly recognised. I hope in today’s
performance to have a shared experience of that fleeting moment
normally confined to our own minds when, consciously or otherwise, we make a choice.