MISSING YOU / KHOR AI MING Song Recital / Review

 

MISSING YOU

KHOR AI MING Vocal Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (18 October 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 October 2025 with the title "Soprano Khor Ai Ming pays tribute to Malaysian roots in a concert on her 55th birthday".

Performing on one’s own 55th birthday must be a daunting task for most, but not so the Malaysia-born soprano Khor Ai Ming, vocal teacher and founder-chorusmaster of Vocal Associates and Joy Chorale. Her two-hour recital, conducted without a break despite nursing a poor stomach, was a microcosm of her personality: vivacious, tireless and driven by the “can-do” spirit.

Speaking in a comfortable mix of Mandarin and Singlish, her life story was laid bare, filled equally with career triumphs and personal vulnerabilities. The programme of songs in multiple languages also amply illustrated a versatility and penchant for diversity.

Raised by strict but loving teacher parents in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, the provinciality of her beginnings was reflected in the opening song Xiao Cheng Gu Shi (小城故事, A Small Town Story) popularised by Teresa Teng. This was followed by Du Juan Hua (杜鹃花, Azalea), also in Mandarin, a recollection of her very first singing competition, which she won, naturally.

There were two parts to Jonathan Lee’s song I Am A Little Bird, first an admission of humility, and later, a yearning to conquer the world. So this was how the recital’s trajectory went. The young Khor Ai Ming tires of being cooped in, and in the Irene Cara-covered song Fame, seeks the bright lights of Singapore.

As a parting shot to her hometown, her sung Malay and dance moves in the song Kuda Hitam (Black Horse) were so idiomatic as to raise some of the evening’s loudest cheers.

Then came a dizzying set of songs in various languages. There was Spanish in Manuel de Falla’s El Pano Moruno (The Moorish Cloth) and Uyghur for Bir Piyale Mey (A Glass of Wine) where she had to jiggle maracas accompanied by her husband Tamagoh on tarabuka (goblet drum). German was represented in the atonal Mondestrunken (Moonstruck) from Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Mack The Knife from Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera.

Her tributes to her brothers included Xinyao pioneer Liang Wern Fook’s Tian Leng Jiu Hui Lai (天冷就回来, Come Back When It Gets Cold), to her mother a pair of Cantonese songs by Anna Lin and Sam Hui, and her late father who loved American pop songs, a Carpenters medley - Yesterday Once More, Top of the World and End of the World. For her students, she offered the Beatles’ Now and Then.

Khor’s first original composition Xing (信, I Believe), the Chinese word also meaning “letter” or “faith”, was poignantly accompanied by Colin Yong on dizi. To close a busy evening, the premiere of Liang’s The Wind of Shanghai, was sung with audience participation, supported by Mei Sheum (keyboard), Bertrand Lee (piano), Yong (bass), Sebastian Ho (guitar), Jeremy Wong (pipa) and Tamagoh (drums).

There was time for two encores, sung in Mandarin - Shi Jie Zeng Yu Wo De (世界赠予我的, My Gifts From The World) popularised by Faye Wong and Wo Xiang Ni Le (我想你了, Missing You) by Hailai Amu. The last was also the concert’s title, a declaration that despite fame and fortune, an artist also needs true and lasting friends.

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.

IN PRAISE OF KHOR AI MING

信 XIN

KHOR AI MING & FRIENDS

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (29 October 2022)

 

I have known Khor Ai Ming since 1992, when she was a fresh-faced 21-year-old girl-next-door singing student and soprano in the Singapore Symphony Chorus. She was soft-spoken, unassuming and totally down to earth, fresh from the Malaysian boondocks of Kota Baru, Kelantan. Who knew that thirty years later she would become one of Singapore’s leading chorusmasters (Vocal Associates and Joy Chorale among others) and stage diva par excellence?

 

Her annual song recitals are sold-out events, presenting an eclectic mix of art songs, arias, folk songs, new works and showstoppers. Her versatility in different genres and diverse languages is awe-inspiring, and few might know she gave one of the first performances of Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal sprechgesang classic Pierrot Lunaire in Singapore.

 

Her latest recital was entitled 信(xin), which is the Chinese word for “letter or message”, besides being the root for Chinese words meaning “faith, trust and confidence”. This wide-ranging concert was a love letter to her late father, who had passed two months ago, and encompassed songs that were lullabies, romances and other affirmations of love.

 

These included songs in Spanish (Manuel Ponce’s Estrellita and three of Manuel de Falla’s Popular Spanish Songs), Hebrew, Japanese, Uyghur, English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Besides exhibiting a wide range of emotions, she is equally adept in varying idioms, moods and languages. She is most comfortable in the Chinese dialects, performing with the right idiom and immediacy in the manner born.

 

Her partners in this concert included her husband percussionist Tamagoh (above), pianists Bertrand Lee and Mei Sheum, guitarist Roberto Zayas (Paraguayan, resident in Taiwan), flautist Rit Xu, bassist Tony Makarome, children from Vocal Associates, and special guests Tamil vocalist Nishanth Thiagarajan and dancer Janaki H. Nair.

 

Pride of place, however, has to go to Ai Ming’s own mother, a retired school teacher, who joined her in two Mandarin songs. Those were the most special moments of this concert, which will not be forgotten anytime soon.

 

Khor Ai Ming has an infectious personality, that is both informal and welcoming. Nothing is off-limits for her. I was particularly entranced by her singing of Malay songs several years ago, clad in the slenderest of kebayas. Those beguiling performances would surely get her in trouble with the Syariah courts and morality police up north, besides giving frustrated imams apoplexies and myocardials.

Children's voices from
Vocal Associates.

 

She is also capable of mustering large groups of singers with little or no experience of choral singing to participate in classics like Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Choral Symphony and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Braddell Heights Symphony Orchestra led by the late Adrian Tan. That level of connection and involvement with the community is something truly special. It is certain that we have not heard the last of Khor Ai Ming.

OMM PROM JAZZ! / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

OMM PROM: JAZZ!

Orchestra of the Music Makers

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (7 March 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 March 2015 with the title "Monteiro makes the most of Montage".

The OMM Prom is an annual themed concert by the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) in which shorter and popular pieces of music are performed for audiences possibly encountering symphonic classical music for the first time. Its Saturday afternoon slot is family friendly and low ticket prices ensure that most Proms are sold out by the time the music starts.

This year's edition conducted by Chan Tze Law celebrated the legacy of symphonic jazz, a term which may be loosely referred to Afro-American styled popular music often employing the blues idiom written by serious composers. Consistent with the SG50 celebrations, Singaporean composer and Cultural Medallion recipient Kelly Tang's jazz piano concerto received its first performance in a version for western orchestra.

Tang's Montage was composed for jazz piano legend Jeremy Monteiro in 2010, but its original orchestration was for Chinese orchestra. The work and its 2014 revision was ecstatically received in the Singapore Chinese Orchestra's concert tour of China, and this version cements its place in the local canon of concertante works. Unlike Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F, which are fully scored for piano and orchestra, Montage is a jazz concerto in the truest sense, because the soloist is given the latitude to improvise as he pleases for a large part of the work.

Although Monteiro was seen shifting reams of paper as he played, much of these are blank sheets, opportune moments for him to weave a spell on his keyboard. This reviewer has heard this work on multiple occasions, and every performance has been different, mostly because the master had chosen to vary his tact on the occasion, either by ornamentation, dynamics or whatever caught his fancy.

This freedom also applied to his trio partners, bassist Christy Smith and drummer Tamagoh, who had their own spiels under the spotlight. The first movement was in sonata form, contrasted by the slow movement's interlude, with Samuel Phua's sensuous soprano saxophone solo replacing the original erhu. The finale's Caribbean-flavoured dance was an infectious and irrepressible expression of pure joy. Thus Montage may be viewed as three different portraits of Monteiro - the academic, the romancer and the raver.

The Monteiro trio played an encore of their own:
I've Never Been In Love Before from Guys and Dolls.

The concert opened with the suite from John Kander's musical Chicago, distinguished by Kenneth Lun's highly evocative trumpet solos and nifty moves with the wah-wah mute. Of a similar inspiration was Shostakovich's Suite for Variety Orchestra, a selection of dances from the Russian's movie music recycled as “jazz”, culminating with the saxy strains of the Waltz (from The First Echelon), which graced Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

The young orchestra was clearly enjoying itself in these light-hearted trifles, but it got serious again in George Gershwin's An American In Paris, the closest thing he wrote to a symphonic poem. This was taken at a slick and goodly pace which contributed to the hustle and bustle of this masterpiece. Despite the tricky cross rhythms and frequent abrupt shifts in dynamics, the orchestra more than coped and when have the taxi-horns sounded more in tune than this? 

The vociferous applause was rewarded with the drums of Tamagoh and the big band in Louis Prima's Sing, Sing, Sing (With A Swing), popularised by Benny Goodman. One will not get more jazzy than this. 

Composer and interpreter:
Kelly Tang with Jeremy Monteiro.

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.