The Story Behind the Song

Celine See

Before the pandemic, Ms Jin Loh’s students still attended lessons in person. This particular video was recorded during one of those simple, quiet evenings — long before Ms Jin Loh’s student, Celine See, became a Country Manager. The song is “When I Look at You” from the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel, and what you see in this recording is Celine in practice — already reaching deep into the character’s world.

At first, Celine sang it the way most students would. The notes were correct. The rhythm was accurate. The voice was in place. But something was missing — and Ms Jin Loh could hear it immediately.

So Ms Jin Loh stopped and explained the story. Not just the words — the story. The character. The world she lives in. The man she is looking at. The grief she cannot speak aloud.

The song’s character is a woman who stands before the man she loves — and no longer recognises him. He is there, as he has always been. But something has quietly changed. She looks at him and wonders: did she ever truly know this person? Does she still love someone who has, without a word, become a stranger? The heartbreak in this song is not dramatic. It does not shout. It aches — quietly, privately — with the weight of everything that remains unspoken.

When Celine sang it again — something shifted. She was no longer singing words. She was inhabiting a woman’s grief. Her voice changed. The way she held each phrase changed. She was not imitating a recording she had heard, not repeating what a teacher had demonstrated. She was feeling it — as the character, from the inside — and it came through in every note.

This is the heart of how Ms Jin Loh teaches. She does not simply drill notes and rhythm, ask students to repeat phrases, or have them imitate the original singer. She teaches her students the story — the message, the character, the emotional truth behind every song. Because she believes — and Celine’s journey with this song is living proof — that this is the only way a singer can truly move an audience. When a singer only knows the words, the audience hears words. But when a singer knows the why — when they have felt the character’s grief, joy, or longing from the inside — the audience feels it too. They cannot help it.

Even in this practice recording, Celine captured the character’s emotion with extraordinary depth — her voice carrying a quality of truth that is rare to find, even among far more experienced performers. Ms Jin Loh knew then that this song had found its singer.

But the most extraordinary moment came on the actual examination day. In the exam room, with the Trinity College London music examiner present, Ms Jin Loh sat at the piano as Celine’s accompanist. Celine sang — and she gave everything. Not just her voice, but her whole self. She connected so completely with the character’s grief, her longing, her quiet devastation, that tears began to accumulate at the brim of both their eyes — right there, in the middle of a formal examination. Neither let them fall. Ms Jin Loh, as the piano accompanist, had to quietly hold herself together — willing her own tears back, note by note, to the very end of the piece.

When they walked out of the exam room, Ms Jin Loh turned to Celine and said, jokingly: “If the Examiner saw your tears dropping while you sang, she would have given you very high marks!”

As it turned out — Celine was awarded as a Trinity College London High Scorer, presented with her certificate on stage at the High Scorers Ceremony, and among the High Scorers honoured that day, Celine was also invited to perform live on stage, singing “When I Look at You”. The music had done exactly what the greatest music does: it said the things that cannot be said any other way — and the examiner heard every one of them.

Celine See — “When I Look at You” from The Scarlet Pimpernel