HAN VO-TA – Biography

Han Vo-Ta is not a professional musician.  An international banker (Bank of Montreal - Singapore Finance - UBS) & business executive (CDL, SIM ...) by trade, he took up music only as a serious hobby; playing music and composing during his spare time.

During his days at Nguyen Trai High School in Saigon, Vietnam (1960-1967), he also studied Classical Guitar at the National Conservatory of Music (1962-1967) with Professor Duong Thieu Tuoc and appeared in various radio & TV programs ...

After passing all three national high school exams with highest honors (Uu hang)   and received Vietnam's President Scholar Award in 1967, Han went to the US in 1968 on a USAID Leadership scholarship.  He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a BS (1972) and MS (1973) from the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management and also received 2 MIT awards.

While at MIT, he continued to further his music education by studying Harmony, Counterpoint, Orchestration, learned piano, taught classical guitar and gave guitar concerts regularly. In 1971, he founded the MIT Classical Guitar Society and published his first guitar transcription "Los Sitios De Zaragosa".  Before leaving MIT, he founded the Boston Classical Guitar Society in 1973.

As an international banker, financial advisor and corporate turnaround specialist, he has lived and worked in San Jose, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Manila and is currently in Singapore, where he and his family have been living since 1981. 

Han Vo-Ta is also an author of many articles on Economics, Finance and Management which have been published in the Saigon Economic Times since 1991.  His latest book, Canh Hoa Truoc Gio, was published in Vietnam in February 2004 and became the best selling economics book in Vietnam when it went into the 5th printing in June 2006

Han wrote his first song in 1974 "Ai Tro Ve Xu Viet" (which is commonly known as "Nho Me"), with the lyrics taken from a poem of his aunt, Minh Duc Hoai Trinh.  However, he did not compose seriously until by chance, he found a collection of poems by Huynh Van Dung in Saigon in 1993, which inspired him to write 10 songs and released his first album "Dau Ngay Xua Rat Xua", both in the US and Vietnam in 1994. He then went on to compose over 600 songs and by 2008, has released 37 CDs...

In 1983, Han founded the Singapore Classical Guitar Society and remained its President for 16 years.  It was during this period that he transcribed and published a number of selected Vietnamese songs for classical guitar.  However, it was not until 2008 that he released his first 2 Guitar CDs "Ben Doi Hiu Quanh" and "Los Sitios de Zaragosa"! His piano arrangements are mostly from a collection of selected pieces which he originally arranged for ... his wife to practice during the long winter days while they were living in Canada! EASTERN MUSIC SINGAPORE is proud to present in this website all the musical works by Han Vo-Ta, consisting of his guitar and piano transcriptions, as well as his Vietnamese songs composed with lyrics from favorite poems ...