TWISTERS / re:mix / Review

 

TWISTERS

re:mix

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (15 December 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 December 2012 with the title "Old music nicely re:mixed".

 

Twisters is local crossover band re:mix’s tribute to the pastiche. A pastiche is a work that borrows from the past, either wholesale or modified to confront the present. Whether crafted tongue-in-cheek or as a serious salute to hallowed tradition, nobody does it better than re:mix and its leader, violinist-conductor Foo Say Ming.

 

 

The concert opened with Zechariah Goh Toh Chai’s PD Cues Bach Invention, commissioned as an imagined Bachian treatment of Paul Desmond and the late Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. Using a French overture, exemplified by the first movement of Bach’s Second Orchestral Suite, as its model, the theme was so well hidden amidst the fugal counterpoint as to be almost elusive.

 

 

J.S.Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto in its original form with significant harpsichord and flute solos may be considered the first major keyboard concerto of the classical canon. Partnering superb flautist Cheryl Lim, harpsichordist Shane Thio emerged from within the basso continuo as a bona fide soloist, culminating with a stunning and almost improvisatory cadenza in the first movement. The applause, although mistimed, was so spontaneous and prolonged that latecomers were mistakenly ushered into the hall as if the work had ended!

 

 

Bach served as the inspiration for the 1965 Jazz Concerto by the Austro-Briton Joseph Horovitz, no relation to the Russian pianist or American music critic. There was something dated about the written-out jazz from the Beatles era, but its bluesy, syncopated tinkling from Thio’s harpsichord and rhythmic drumbeats of Tama Goh resounded like the freewheeling style of the much-in-vogue Ukrainian jazzman Nikolai Kapustin.

 

 

As if proving that musical styles - like fashion trends – make cyclical comebacks like well-flung boomerangs, the final work showed the durability of the tango, not by Argentine Astor Piazzolla but Frenchman Darius Milhaud, who spent time in Brazil as a minor diplomat. His Cinema Fantaisie or Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (Ox On The Roof), a riotous ballet with an absurd Dadaist-like story, saw re:mix at its imperious best.

 

Director Foo at full flight, helming its virtuosic solo, is one of Singapore’s most exciting artists. One really feels his driving passion, and his charges responded with similar verve and ebullience for a spirited close. To complete the 80-minute concert, the ensemble offered as encore Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, added cheer for an already splendid afternoon.      

 

 

Note: Foo Say Ming is proud to recount that Shane Thio and Tama Goh were the pianist and drummer at the Singapore premiere of the Horovitz Jazz Concerto, performed by the Singapore Symphony conducted by Lim Yau during the mid-1990s. 



ALTERED STATES / re:mix / re:view

ALTERED STATES
re:mix
Esplanade Recital Studio
Tuesday (7 December 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 December 2010.

One thing is certain in concerts by the chamber group re:mix, that is to expect the unexpected. “What will they think of next?” is a recurring mantra, as pre-conceptions are inevitably shattered. The latest gig by re:mix was its most outrageous yet.

Yet it began almost conventionally. Actor William Ledbetter (left), now an unlikely force in music education, opened by extolling the anarchic virtues of re:mix, its originality and creativity. Then came a complete performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture, led by director Foo Say Ming clutching on his violin, played straight.

Ledbetter was scandalised. “How dare they perform anything as it was written?” he implied. Indeed this unscheduled stop was a first time the group had performed a standard overture. But its real purpose was to introduce Michael Nyman’s In Re Don Giovanni, a short minimalist piece based on a shorter fragment from the Catalogue Aria. “That’s more like it!” Ledbetter seemed chuffed.

Next stop was Paganini, that devilish and stooped violinist with spindly contorted fingers. His First Violin Concerto in D major (Op.6) is familiar enough, but not the Viennese coffee house version brewed by Fritz Kreisler. This was music from the first movement but dressed up in a ball gown, and smothered with marzipan and Schlagobers (whipped cream).

The score included a harp (with no less than SSO principal Gulya Mashurova), florid flute counter-melodies and mutated orchestral parts. Soloist Foo performed this musical bride of Frankenstein like Igor might have, somewhat tipsy but no one minded. This curious piece of kitsch was vulgar in the extreme, perhaps deliberately so.

Frankenstein’s monster himself surfaced for the final piece, Samba No.5! by Cultural Medallion recipient Iskandar Ismail, a transmogrification of the first movement from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Ledbetter first primed his audience into going Da-da-da-dum and then the beat started. Central to the ensemble was drummer Tama Goh and two percussionists who manned the bongos, congas and tambourine.

Snatches and swathes of original Beethoven were grafted upon Iskandar’s highly rhythmic score, culminating in a cadenza ad libitum by the tambourine virtuoso, with orchestral players swaying on the sidelines. It was rough and ready from start to end, but there was no denying the energy and vitality of the whole enterprise.

re:mix had done it again; again what will they think of next?

Concert photographs courtesy of Vincent Wang (the better ones) and Tama Goh (the rest).

SINGAPORE CHINESE ORCHESTRA Opening Gala: Jazz You Up / Review

SCO OPENING GALA:
JAZZ YOU UP WITH JEREMY MONTEIRO
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Singapore Conference Hall
Friday (6 August 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 August 2010.

For the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s Opening Gala of the 2010-11 season, local jazz great Jeremy Monteiro held sway like a colossus. His imprimatur as composer, arranger and piano virtuoso was to be ever present at this unusual but highly engaging concert.

Ironically it was the first few minutes – Monteiro’s Overture in C major: The Story of Singapore – which proved the least convincing. Its Coplandesque opening gestures, drumming rhythms and ethnic motifs, later giving way to National Day Parade favourite One People, One Nation, One Singapore, went down like oil and water.

It was when Monteiro eventually emerged to perform his Olympia that the evening truly began. Improvisation is the heart of jazz. Eric Watson’s arrangement offered grateful parts to Yu Jia and Sunny Wong on the pipa and erhu respectively, before Monteiro wrapped up with riffs of his own.

Where does structured composition end and improvisation begin, was a question asked of local serious composer Kelly Tang (left) in his latest piano concerto, wittily-titled Montage. Cast in three movements, his use of the Chinese orchestra was sparing to the point that the ensemble operated mostly from the peripheries while Monteiro’s trio (with bassist Christy Smith and drummer Tama Goh, below) dominated centrestage.

The slow movement, a nocturne for piano and Zhao Jian Hua’s lovely erhu, luxuriated with Chopin-like radiance and Mozartian clarity. The rhythmic exuberance of the finale, where instrumental balance was again problematic, however swept the board with its sheer energy. Plaudits go to Tang for daring to experiment (his earlier piano concerto was atonal), and this genre is well-worth exploring further.

Conductor Yeh Tsung (left) doubled up ad-hoc emcee, proselytising as slickly as a tele-evangelist. With good reason, as in Monteiro’s Asiana, more of SCO’s soloists had their moment in the spotlight. Yin Zhi Yang and Tan Chye Tiong on dizi, Xu Hui’s all-too brief guzheng solo all shone, while the excellent Han Lei whose guanzi could have easily been Kenny G’s saxophone. Kong Hong Wei’s Summer Palace, also with Han, provided the token piece of chinoiserie.

Tony Makarome’s arrangement of Victor Feldman’s Seven Steps To Heaven closed a lively evening, not before Tama Goh’s wild drummer act brought down the house. Monteiro, who could pass off as Fred Flintstone’s twin, offered the theme from The Flintstones as an encore. Cartoon music at the SCO? Notch up a new first for the record books.