SOUNDS OF THE CITY / Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute / Review

 

SOUNDS OF THE CITY 

Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute 

Conservatory Conert Hall 

Saturday (22 February 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 February 2025 with the title "Spontaneous mix of composition and improvisation".

Jazz was in the air again when the Yong Siew Toh Orchestral Institute conducted by Jason Lai performed a concert of mostly American music. Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, composed in 1948 for jazz legend Benny Goodman and scored with harp, strings and piano, opened the evening. YST Concerto Competition prizewinner Zheng Shanxi gave a very polished account that lacked nothing in virtuosity, spirit and verve. 

Conceived in two continuous sections, it began with a pastoral drawl where the clarinet sculpted a long-breathed lyrical song over slow ambling steps from the accompaniment. Zheng’s beautifully-shaped tone carried into an animated syncopated finale where she traded wits and barbs with the band. 

In between was an elaborately sinuous cadenza, sounding almost improvised on the spot. This music was all carefully score and scripted, but the trick was to make it appear totally spontaneous, and in a word – jazzy. This was the essence of 20th century concert-hall jazz, where the divide between actual composition and improvisation is rendered almost invisible. 

Without a break, a New Orleans-styled marching band trooped down the aisle in a procession that opened We Build This City, a collaborative work by the orchestra involving improvisation. With input from faculty members, Dutch improvisation specialist Karst de Jong and local composer-pianist Jonathan Shin, it was performed with neither conductor nor scored parts. 

What could have sounded like complete musical mayhem however came across as intelligent and almost structured. Its 14 minutes relived the plodding beginning of the earlier Copland, over which seemingly random ideas were poured into the mix. The music drifted into Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie territory before coming to a C major pedal point where the Dawn from Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra could have achieved lift-off. 

Those examples showed that from a primordial soup of dabbling and doodling would eventually emerge composition, an art so eloquently demonstrated for the Asia Pacific Improvisers Symposium which this concert was its closing event. Over further ostinatos came a menagerie of animal sounds, and later the more familiar themes and fragments which coalesced into the first page of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. 

Conductor Lai had slipped onto the podium almost unnoticed as this concert showpiece went into full stride. The first Singapore performance of the unabridged critical edition by Mark Clague, reliving original sounds that Gershwin had conceived before its 1928 premiere, was a total triumph. With some 104 bars were restored, the work was brought past its 20-minute mark. 

All the memorable moments were retained, including the famous honking klaxons (taxi horns), now sounding refreshingly different, and that beguiling Blues section with its silvery trumpet solo, possibly the classical canon’s sexiest music. 

Particularly ear-opening was the “new” music, with glances into Gershwin’s ever-evolving creative soul and mind. Did one briefly spot flashes from his opera Porgy and Bess or Igor Stravinsky’s early ballets? Possibly, and a beloved flute solo was now heard in its full extended glory. Loud cheers erupted at the uproarious conclusion of the hour-long concert, and what an hour it was.