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.