LIFE / Nanyang Collective / Review

LIFE

Nanyang Collective

Esplanade Recital Studio

Friday (10 February 2023)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 February 2023 with the title "Life is a multi-faceted musical installation".

 

Nanyang Collective was formed last year by players of Western and traditional Asian instruments,  with the vision of presenting new works by local composers which united aesthetes of diverse cultures. Fusion and crossover are much-bandied terms, but this ensemble appears much more than that.

 

Life, its latest production, was a multi-faceted musical installation rather than mere composition. The instrumental set-up, with three separate layers - grand/toy piano in front, strings, flutes, gamelan and pipa just behind, and suona, euphonium and percussion on risers – gave the myriad sonorities ample space and scope to resonate. Led by young conductor Dedric Wong De Li, the just over 40-minute concert comprising three works merged as one was both an eye and ear-opener.  

 

When does life begin, and where does it go? Is it a cycle of renewal and regeneration, or a constant series of limited terms? The reverberance of a vibrating tam tam (gong) in near total darkness, raw and raucous, from percussionist Eugene Toh seemed symbolic for the birth of time. That was how Creation by John Sharpley, Texas-born but long-time resident in Singapore, began.

 

An eruption of sound from all nine instrumentalists, including Abigail Sin striking the piano’s innards with a mallet, greeted the procession of one hunched in pain and agony. Enter the cloaked figure of actor Ora, ambling across the players before collapsing in a heap. Was this the passage of infirmity and old age, or a prelude to rebirth? After a flash of light (and short silence), there emerged a newborn’s cries, and the simple melody of a Bartok rondo played on toy piano.

 

Life then took on a more theatrical turn with protagonist Ora acting out growing pangs of a child. Where Sharpley’s Life segued into Jon Lin Chua Sisyphus’s Dilemma, the second work, was not clearly demarcated but that did not matter given the performance’s seamless flow. When does infancy end and childhood begin, or when does adulthood follow adolescence? Does anybody really care?    

 

The soundscapes had thus far been mostly atonal, but Life also afforded stretches of melody and harmony, such as jazzy riffs of ostinatos led by piano and percussion or the sheer aural beauty of Niranjan Pandian’s bansuri (Indian flute) partnered with Brian Lim’s suling (Balinese flute). These alternating episodes seemed to represent cycles of frenetic activity and temporary respite, as if one’s existence looped in endless and ever-repetitive cycles.

 

A third element of Life was the inclusion of San Zi Jing (Three Character Classic), recited ad nauseam by children in Chinese medium primary schools, as well as Ora herself. Malaysian composer Chong Kee Yong’s Destiny, the trilogy’s final part, played on that almost inescapable fact of life. One is born innocent, but eventually corrupted by merely existing.    

 

Overall, this was a thought-provoking experiment in sound and drama, with the very versatile ensemble supported by a team including stage director Lim Chin Huat, dramaturg Neo Hai Bin, lighting designer Dorothy Png and others. One can only hope for more equally challenging projects to come from Nanyang Collective.

Photographs by 

Lim Shao Yong / Nanyang Collective.

THE NYONYA JOURNEY / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

THE NYONYA JOURNEY

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Friday (4 November 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 November 2016 with the title "Spicing up Peranakan tunes". 

Peranakan culture came about through Chinese immigrants travelling down the South China Sea to settle and go native in the lands of Southeast Asia, which they referred to as Nanyang. The inimitable melting pot of Chinese and Indo-Malay indigenous cultures came to define their lifestyles, cuisine, dressing, language and mores.

This Singapore Chinese Orchestra concert conducted by Yeh Tsung featured four world premieres of works celebrating the Peranakan experience, each different and individual in its own way. Chinese composer Xie Xiang Ming's Colours opened the concert, its repetitive short and rhythmic motifs on winds and plucked strings forming a patchwork that recalled minimalism and the patterns found on local fabrics and tiles. There was a semblance of melody from the cellos but that was not further developed with the work's abrupt ending.

Subtle were the local influences in East Malaysian Simon Kong Su Leong's Tok Panjang (Nyonya Delicacies) that relived the spices and flavours to be found in a festive long table feast. There were four linked parts, entitled Teh Mata Kuching And Wine, Festival Dishes, Nyonya Kueh and Areca, which whetted the appetite for something equivalent to sambal belacan, but this was not fully sated. Humming from the players closed the work quietly as bibiks delved on the pleasures of betel nut.

The most aromatic work was Chong Kee Yong's Celebration of Faith, which employed four ensembles: the main orchestra, a troupe of five offstage musicians and two groups of winds on opposite balconies. Beginning with a crackling old gramophone recording of ceremonial music, the music soon became an Ivesian symphony of aural assails, each group operating independently of each other. The heady piece closed with a clangourous procession of the quintet marching out of the hall and receding into the distance.

The longest work was Dick Lee's The Journey of Lee Kan, the story of his ancestor seven times removed who left the Fujian town of Yong Chun at the age of 18 in 1776 to make a living in Malacca. He started a local family line but eventually returned to China, possibly from irresistible homesickness. Scored for orchestra, chorus (Vocal Consort) and two soloists, this was more a cantata than an oratorio unless one considers ancestor worship a religion.

Lee himself gave a short introduction, humourously referring to his forebear as “The First Mad Chinaman”, referencing his bestselling 1990 album The Mad Chinaman. Singer-actor George Chan sang the eponymous part while soprano Felicia Teo Kaixin was his love interest Tuan Neo. Both singers were amplified, but the volume could have been further boosted for more clarity above the orchestral throng.

The music never got out of Lee's comfort zone of writing for musicals in English, with pretty tunes and agreeable harmonies par for the course. SCO Composer-in-Residence Eric Watson's expert orchestration added to the colour, but there was no further room for an edginess which would have made the work more memorable.

Had the words been in Hokkien, Malay or both, the outcome might have been quite different, and likely more authentic. As a musical experiment, this was a worthy effort that can be further developed. 

Composers and colleagues:
Eric Watson (2nd from left),
Chong Kee Yong (3rd from right) and
Simon Kong Su Leong (extreme right).

SINGAPURA / Singapore International Festival of Music / Review

SINGAPURA

Singapore International Festival of Music

Gallery, The Arts House

Wednesday (7 October 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 October 2015 with the title "Protest song warns against apathy".

At first acquaintance, Singapura, the only concert segment of the Singapore International Festival of Music (SIFOM) to feature local music, appeared to be an excuse to bring together works from Singapore, Malaysia and Japan. After sitting through its hour-long duration, the concert became greater than the sum of its parts.

Phoon Yew Tien's Separation Of The Newly Wed (1987) was a setting of Tang dynasty poet Du Fu's poem about a couple torn by the onset of war. Soprano Ashley Chua's Chinese words played equal partner to Audi Goh's oboe, Adrian Wee's erhu and Chua Yew Kok's pipa in an intensely moving work where fraught emotions were matched by the imaginative playing. The drum-like rhythms struck by the pipa provided the necessary dramatics.

The symbolism of the forcible separation of Singapore in 1965 from the newly formed Malaysia before any meaningful consummation became all the more relevant. War and conflict was the theme of this Festival, and even though the late Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) was pacifist by nature, his gentle work Rain Spell (1982) provided voices of contention.

Flute (played by Cheryl Lim) and harp (Lee Yun Chai) were among his favourite compositional instruments. Their dreamy tones, joined by the mellowness of the vibraphone (Iskandar Rashid) and clarinet (Vincent Goh), were sharply contrasted with Chenna Lu's piano, where metallic chords were augmented by the strumming of its strings. With Takemitsu, sound textures often trumped thematic cohesion.

Tan Chan Boon's Conversation for Horn & Piano (1993) was a fantasy on Taiwanese tunes in three movements. The virtuosic solo was expertly helmed by Alexander Oon, with the piano part (Lu again) given the freedom of playful asides and surprising harmonies. The lightest work on the programme was followed by the densest, Malaysian composer Chong Kee Yong's Yellow Dust (1994, revised 2015) for string quartet.

Its title refers to the loess storms that bury ancient cities like Xi'an, in turn concealing and revealing historical findings through the millennia. Its highly dissonant language, interspersed with shards and fragments of melody, carries on the legacy of string quartets by Bartok and Ligeti. These extremes were handled with total discipline and much conviction by violinists Seah Huan Yuh and Liu Yi Retallick, violist Jonathan Lee and cellist Chan Si Han.  

Three choral works by Leong Yoon Pin (1931-2011), performed sympathetically by Schola Cantorum led by Albert Tay, completed the concert. Dragon Dance, one of his most-performed works, is a quasi-fugal chant of the onomatopoeic “qiang-dong-qiang” of the drums, punctuated by the rolled R's in the flight of silk balls. His arrangement of the Javanese tune Bengawan Solo remains popular as always.

In between was his unpublished Nightmare (1988), with texts by Angeline Yap, which ranks as the soft-spoken composer's most controversial work. It is prefaced by the disclaimer, “To care for a country / Is not always to be seen to praise / To scold (and to laugh at oneself) is also to love,” proclaimed by the conductor. Although garbed in the English choral tradition, it warns against a culture of complacency, apathy and blind obeisance.

No names or political parties were cited, but one soon recognises who are “the led” and who are the “men of straw”. In this prescient protest song, the patriotic Leong (and Yap) had prophetically predicted the result of the 2015 General Elections. 

CANVAS OF NATURE / Asian Contemporary Ensemble / Review

CANVAS OF NATURE

Asian Contemporary Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (27 February 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 March 2013 with the title "Riotous soprano a force of Nature".

The New Music Ensemble of our local conservatory has spawned a child of its own: the Asian Contemporary Ensemble (ACE), led by young conductor and Yong Siew Toh graduate Wong Kah Chun. Taking a leaf from its parent ensemble, it gave a most invigorating and uncompromisingly dissonant concert under the banner of Esplanade’s adventurous Spectrum contemporary music series.

A large body of students and fair number of cognoscenti first heard Chong Kee Yong’s Mourning the Murder of an Old Banyan Tree (2002), conducted by the Malaysian composer himself (above). Inspired by a poem of the same title by Usman Awang, and scored for piano, violin, cello, clarinet, flute and percussion, it pursued an angry and grimly aggressive course.

The tolling of a temple gong marked the death knell of a centuries-old and beloved institution, an indictment of relentless urban progress. The procession of the flautist and clarinettist offstage at the end was also symbolic of the spirits of nature leaving and silenced, never to return.

Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu’s rather well-known A Way A Lone (1981) was serene by comparison. Its palpable melancholy was keenly brought out by the string quartet led by violinist Shaun Ho (above). Although atonal in most part, the spare post-impressionist scoring with tiny wisps of melody had a quality of being unusually luxuriant and sonorous.

All the above would still not have prepared the audience for the shuddering impact of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot), the seminal 20^th century masterpiece composed 101 years ago. Originally conceived for the cabaret, it makes use of the vocal technique known as Sprechstimme or Sprechgesang, where the performer hovers in limbo between singing and speaking.

Stealing the show was soprano Khor Ai Ming, sporting facial paint, a wild hairdo and attired in commedia dell’arte finery. In the 21 short movements sung in German, she lived and acted out its riotous range of emotions and moods. Whether punch-drunk or suspended in a semi-trance, it was difficult to tell, mostly because of the absence of texts or translations which would have greatly helped the listener traverse its numerous thorny brambles.

So one would have to rely on her vocal cues and facial improvisations to imagine what was going on. Listening to a recording will easily test one’s patience, and several members of the audience did walk out mid-way, but it was Khor’s stunning one-woman wrecking crew which kept everyone else transfixed.

Khor Ai Ming appearing truly moonstruck at the end of the work.

The six instrumentalists led by conductor Wong were close to excellent, transparent and incisive in their razor-keen responses. Not to mention pianist Bertrand Tan, flautist Cheryl Lim, clarinettist Tan Boon Ping, violinist Clarissa Ng, violist He Ziping or cellist James Ng’s contributions would be remiss. All of them, and Khor singing only her second Pierrot, deserve to be part of local musical history.  

       
Note: Khor Ai Ming and The Magnetic Band gave the Singapore premiere of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire several years ago in the same venue.

Life and Death in the City / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble / Review

LIFE & DEATH IN THE CITY
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory New Music Ensemble
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday (18 April 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 April 2010.

The idea of musique concrete – the use of natural sounds mixed into a musical score - has been in existence for several decades, a technique often employed by the avant-garde movement. It made a definitive grand appearance in a concert by the Conservatory New Music Ensemble in works by Steve Reich and Mauricio Kagel conducted by SSO principal percussionist Jonathan Fox.

Reich’s City Life (1995) recently received its Singapore premiere some weeks ago by the same forces, and a second airing was equally welcome. If anything, the young performers displayed more confidence in tackling the thorny score that got increasingly frenetic and oppressive. Samples of street cries, pile-drivers, sirens, a fire engine and looped voices (a Reich specialty) were mixed within its five linked movements. The last, Heavy Smoke, used sounds from the scene of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, eerily foretelling the events of 911.

There was some relief provided by Malaysian Chong Kee Yong’s Liu Xu Fei (2001), a 6-minute work for oboe and cello inspired by Tang poetry. Oboist Wang Jin and cellist Pan Chang rendered their demanding intertwined soliloquys with much authority. The work was atonal for certain, but it had a strangely calming effect.

The largest work was the Argentine maverick Kagel’s “December 24, 1931” Garbled News (1991), which was also the zaniest. The date referred to his actual birthday, and each movement based on a news event that occurred on that day. Performed by just nine musicians, it seemed like a whole orchestra and the proverbial kitchen sink.

Sublime and ridiculous sat cheek by jowl in its seven movements, which included reports of a Buenos Aires jail revolt, Japanese atrocities in Manchuria, a Nazi cigarette commercial, a Vatican library accident, a migrant worker’s letter and Christmas chimes that failed. Reporting and singing the news in German was veteran baritone William Lim, whose deadpan yet theatrical delivery was a revelation.

The scoring was colourful, ingenious and often riotous. The final movement literally saw sparks fly from a car battery, an Ivesian collision of carillons and Lim’s own procession of “ding dongs” as he exited the stage. With persuasive performers like these, modern music at its most outlandish and irreverent looks likely to stay.