EOS / LAND WITH NO SUN IV:
QUARTET FOR THE REBIRTH OF TIME
TO Ensemble
Esplanade Recital Studio
Saturday (19 September 2026)
From its title, it may appear that TO Ensemble’s latest concert had taken a leaf from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. After all, their combination of pianist, two string players and a wind player was a similar configuration as the Frenchman’s famous quartet (piano, violin, cello and clarinet) that performed in Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp in Gorlitz on 15 January 1941. Instead of the doom and gloom faced by the French foursome in WWII, jazz pianist Tze Toh’s Quartet for the Rebirth of Time (Quatuor pour la renaissance du temps if you will), original music with improvisations, represented renewal and hope for the future.
Joined by Wu Bingling (violin), Lazar T.Sebastine (Carnatic violin) and Teo Boon Chye (saxophone), the quartet like Messiaen’s performed the concert's ten movements in various instrumental combinations. The first three movements saw each of the instruments being introduced with Tze’s piano. Slow piano chords in A flat minor opened [Darkness] Obscurita, with Bingling’s violin singing a song of nostalgia. Teo’s sax playing in D flat major was ushered in [Hope] Land With No Sun Theme before a raga from Lazar’s Carnatic violin became the basis of [Reset] Begin (Again) / Gambiranatta.
All four were heard together for the first time in [Overload] Hyperloop, with both violins racing each other in a perpetual motion in A minor, before sax joins the fray, before ending abruptly in a startling halt. [Disconnect] Suspension was the most dissonant movement, with hazy piano chords matching the PSI over Esplanade while the grinding tones from violin and sax were being extracted.
[Love] A Chance Of Love in D major was Tze’s tribute to the melodies of Ennio Morricone, with both violins expressing varying degrees of sadness and regret in some of the concert’s loveliest music. In [Time] Child’s Play, now centred in G major, a beat tapped out by strings and sax provided a constant pulse for a number resembling classic tropes of minimalism.
By this time, the quartet was truly in the zone with G major being firmly ensconced as the definitive tonal centre. [Morning] Mornings, first heard on sax, was a melody that could go on forever, made even more beautiful with the Carnatic violin entering. This was the dawn that refreshes the night, and what followed, [Rebirth] Rebirth was exactly what was referred to in the concert’s title.
This was the concert’s longest movement, its kinetic beat resonating in a rhythmic dance that had gospel vibes about it. This is exactly the kind of ecstatic music which hysterical congregations in full gospel evangelical churches used to go into trances and speak / sing / rage in tongues. Pure opium for the holy spirit or whatever possessed them.
Having overshot their time, TO Ensemble’s final number [New Dawn] Dawn / Procession was short-winded, its brief minutes representing the endless parade a group such as theirs could go on if given the time and chance. The invigorating end to a 75-minute concert was greeted with prolonged applause, followed by a lively post-concert chat which showed that Tze and his gang had won over many converts. Long may that continue.
