Singaporean award-winning pianist, 12, gets picked among 120 globally for Antarctic voyage to recite dangers of climate change

SINGAPORE — Hillary O'Sullivan is a 12-year-old multiple-award-winning pianist with her own YouTube channel which has videos of her playing various classical piano pieces. Two of these pieces landed her a recital opportunity in an epic adventure: An expedition to the Antarctic. 

“The founder of the expedition, Michael Aw, saw Hillary’s YouTube videos on two piano recitals she gave in Indonesia and Maldives, and contacted us to see if we would be keen to learn and play for the expedition,” her mother, Ms Elaine Lim, told TODAY.

Hillary has been playing the piano since the tender age of three and has won 11 awards, including the Silver Award at the Singapore Raffles International Music Festival Piano Competition in 2021.

Ms Lim, 48, is a photographer and a marine enthusiast who is passionate about protecting the planet and the oceans.

The pair were among 12 from Singapore selected to go to the Antarctic from Feb 13 to 23 this year, along with 108 other people from around the world.

Hillary, a Singaporean who is in Grade 6 at St Joseph's Institution International, is the youngest to have gone on Ocean Geographic Society’s expeditions since 1998, according to Ms Janel Kok, 46, the society's vice president of communications.

Organised by Ocean Geographic Society, a group of ocean environment enthusiasts, its climate expeditions takes place every two to three years, with this year’s aim to gather people from different parts of the world to find ways to mitigate climate change. 

This year’s expedition involved 120 people from all walks of life and with various expertise, ranging from scientists to wildlife photographers. 

ADVOCATING FOR CLIMATE AWARENESS

Hillary missed two weeks of school to go on the expedition.

"But my school was very understanding and my teacher helped by giving me some homework sheets I could work on during the voyage," she said. 

During the expedition, she played a piano piece called “An Antarctic Rhapsody” by Mr Eric Bettens, a music composer who was commissioned to write the piece for the expedition. 

Hillary said the piece is about the dire climate situation the world is in and the urgency for change to happen. 

Through the expedition, Hillary sought to use her musical skills to advocate for climate awareness. 

“From there, I learnt new things, like how recycling isn’t the solution. Instead of recycling, which everybody does, we should stop the problem at its source,” she said. 

To address the root cause, Hillary believes that people should instead stop using single-use plastic for plastic bags and water bottles, for instance.

She fondly recalled snorkelling and seeing penguins, seals and whales, but she also noticed several worrying signs of climate change there, including the sight of watermelon snow, which is pink-red snow caused by freshwater green algae. 

Other signs that Hillary saw were melting glaciers, orphan penguins, warm temperatures and sunny days, “which are uncommon in the poles”. 

Ms Kong Man Jing, who was among the Singaporeans in the expedition, recounted how at the first location she arrived at, she could not spot any ice and instead found grass to be growing, which is another indicator of climate change. 

Since coming back from the expedition, the 28-year-old hopes to use her social media platforms and remind her audience of the significant impact of climate change in the Antarctic. 

“We hope to really reach out to the mass audience to showcase that if the most remote place on earth can feel the impacts, then you best know that we will feel it, too,” said the co-founder of the Science and Nature channel called Just Keep Thinking. 

“Finding a solution together is really not easy, but we shouldn't not do it because it’s not easy. Big problems don't have an easy solution.”

Dr Saw Huat Seong, a 79-year-old Singaporean who went on the expedition, said that it was especially important to involve youths in this expedition. 

“We are too old to do anything. We have destroyed the world,” he said.

“So it is really important to involve the younger group of people because now global warming is in their hands.”

CLARIFICATION: Ocean Geographic Society has clarified that its climate expeditions include places other than Antarctica. Hillary's parents have also clarified that their daughter is in an international school and not required to take the Primary School Leaving Examination.