CRYSTAL TO PORCELAIN: KHOR AI MING & TAMAGOH'S 20TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

What a privilege it is to have been among 80 guests invited to Esplanade Recital Studio on Sunday 27 October 2024 to attend the 20th wedding anniversary concert of singer chorusmaster Khor Ai Ming and drummer extraordinaire Tamagoh. Like her annual concerts, this was a heady mix of Ai Ming's favourite songs in Chinese, Malay, Japanese and German, accompanied by the star-studded Simply Jazz Band. 

Esplanade Recital Studio was transformed, with the rows of concert seats removed and its place special arms chairs and coffee tables, arranged as in a jazz lounge. This was a very special concert in celebration of a China anniversary, which the couple niftily called a Porcelain anniversary. Here are some of the photos, and needless to say, all who attended had a great time. 

A special invitation card
and special seating at Esplanade Recital Studio.

The evening's programme,
wedding dinner style!

Ai Ming and Tama make
a very compatible pair,
the secret for 20 good years.

Ai Ming's Kurt Weill segment
was accompanied by pianist Bertrand Lee.

The Simply Jazz Band performs.

Ai Ming accompanies herself in one song.

The final encore was Bizet's Habanera
from Carmen sung in Chinese. 

Take a bow, Ai Ming & Tama.
Here's to 20 more good years!

We were guests along with
Dr & Mrs Tony Makarome,
with the best seats in the house.

THE COLOUR PALETTE OF MY LIFE / Khor Ai Ming Vocal Recital / Review

THE COLOUR PALETTE OF MY LIFE

Khor Ai Ming Vocal Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (1 November 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 November 2014 with the title "Soprano turns yesterday's pop tunes into art songs".

Celebrated as a choir conductor and vocal coach, Malaysia-born soprano Khor Ai Ming continues to develop as a solo recitalist in her annual recitals, which showcase a wide swathe of repertoire. There are other sopranos who can boast of more powerful lungs or flashier techniques but few are blessed with Khor’s versatility. After all, who is equally at home singing Chinese and Malay songs, Western classical standards and modern works such as Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire?

This two-hour long recital, performed without a break, showcased some 20 songs in a totally informal setting. Far from being a serious and staid affair, she chatted and bantered with her audience like a show-and-tell session, where the listeners were privy to her life story.

The first sentences of Harold Arlen’s Over The Rainbow were sung without accompaniment, a very difficult proposition given how exposed the lines were, but she did so fearlessly and without wavering. Sebastian Ho’s guitar accompaniment then emerged, providing a jazzy spin to the song.

Those impressed by Khor’s idiomatic grasp of Malay in P.Ramlee’s Getaran Jiwa and Jimmy Boyle’s Peteri Putera (in arrangements by Juliette Lai) will have learnt that she learnt Bahasa Malaysia as a first language in school while growing up in Kota Baru. Her father listened to Chinese pop records while her mother sang to raise funds to buy her school’s first piano. Those memories were relived in songs like Mo Ran’s Bu Liao Qing and Mai Tang Ge (Selling Sweets), also performed with much flair and allure.

Western classical repertoire was picked up in Singapore, represented by three Italian aria antiche, accompanied by pianist Bertrand Lee. Giordani’s Caro Mio Ben was given a sleek and clean reading, while Cesti’s Intorno All’idol Mio revealed clear enunciation and delicate nuances. In Paisiello’s Nel Cor Piu Non Mi Sento, florid embellishments were attempted in its variations but not all were pulled off with the greatest of ease.

She also thanked Singapore for presenting her with the greatest gift of all, her husband the drummer Tamagoh, whose band of guitaring Ho and bassist Tony Makarome provided an improvised interlude as she exited for a change of costume. They also gave back-up for a sequence of jazzy songs by William Walton, Betty Roe, Kurt Weill and Xavier Montsalvatge. The last composer’s Canto Negro was an uproarious dance-song in Catalan, with the slightest excuse for the band to jam and jive.

Chinese pop songs of yesteryear were now rendered like true art songs by Khor, and these represented the concert’s best moments. Only a stone cold heart would not be moved by her versions of Qian Shou, Shu Tian Shu or Ju Hua Tai (Chrysanthemum Pavilion) which was accompanied by Chinese brush painter Stephen Leong’s on-the-spot creation on a canvas. He was done by the end of the songs, a painting of a floral garden with added calligraphy.

The recital closed with Dick Lee’s Bunga Sayang and Harry Carroll’s I’m Always Chasing Rainbows (inspired by a Chopin melody), which roused a standing ovation. Khor Ai Ming’s next recital will be keenly awaited. 

Photos by the kind permission of Khor Ai Ming.

OF FLOWERS, BIRDS & SONGS / Khor Ai Ming Vocal Recital / Review

OF FLOWERS, BIRDS & SONGS

Khor Ai Ming Vocal Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (30 October 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 October 2013 with the title "Khor's harmonious serenade to nature".

This reviewer has had the pleasure and privilege of being acquainted with Khor Ai Ming for about twenty years, when she was a young soprano in the Singapore Symphony Chorus. She has since risen to become chorus mistress of the Singapore Lyric Opera Children’s Choir and one of the nation’s most versatile and distinctive art song practitioners. That she gave the Singapore premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal melodrama Pierrot Lunaire in 2006 says quite a bit.

Her 80-minute long recital was a tribute to nature, birds and bees, inspired by the eco-garden cultivated by Khor and her husband Tamagoh in their second home in Johore. His photographs of nature were projected onto the back wall of the hall, as she sang three groups of songs with three visually stunning changes of costumes.

Adorning headgear that vaguely resembled a bird of paradise, her first six songs comfortably segued between Italian (Alessandro Scarlatti’s Violets), French (chansons by Ravel and Debussy), English (Matyas Seiber’s The Owl and the Pussycat) and German (Schoenberg’s Der Kranke Mond), sounding equally persuasive in all. As good voice teachers demand, her diction and articulation was spot on, and her always pleasant tone rose to a bright luminous ring in the upper registers.

She was sensitively accompanied by pianist Bertrand Lee for the songs with flautist Cheryl Lim making a cameo in the Schoenberg number. A Malay dancer accompanied by bassist Tony Makarome (also doubling on tabla) and drummer Tamagoh provided a spirited interlude before Khor emerged in an arresting gilded Malay wedding outfit.

The Malay songs Kuda Hitam (Black Horse) and Manuk Dadali (The Eagle), sung totally idiomatically with the requisite hip-swaying and sashaying, provided a hypnotic and visceral allure that bordered on inflaming passions. Makarome’s Malay Folksong Medley, including favourites like Burong Kakak Tua and Lenggang Kangkong, featured jazzy improvisations by pianist Mei Sheum.

Sheum’s arrangements of five Chinese songs greeted a further costume change, with Khor now in a cheongsam reminiscent of Shanghai chanteuses and temptresses. Another dancer, masked like some oriental phantom of the opera, joined in the fray as she crooned Mandarin oldies like the ubiquitous Yue Lai Xiang (Evening Fragrance), Chuan Ge (Boat Song), Ju Hua Tai (Chrysanthemum Terrace), Rose Rose I Love You, and Chen Li De Yue Liang (Moonlight in the City).

These songs, delivered with much showmanship and sincerity, clearly touched a harmonious chord with her audience, which was further rewarded with Khor’s encore of Only Love. Her annual recitals, of which this is the fifth, will be a keenly awaited fixture in the concert calendar.  

All photographs by courtesy of Khor Ai Ming and Tamagoh.