pianomania: SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL CHORAL FESTIVAL 2024: GRAND PRIX & AWARD CEREMONY / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL

CHORAL FESTIVAL 2024

GRAND PRIX & AWARD CEREMONY

Esplanade Concert Hall

Wednesday (31 July 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 August 2024 with the title "Philippines' Sola Gratia Chorale shines at Singapore International Choral Festival 2024".

After four days of competition, workshops and outreach involving 72 choirs and 2869 singers from Singapore, Southeast Asia, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the 8th Singapore International Choral Festival came to rousingly spectacular conclusion. The final concert showcased the creme de la creme from nine categories of competition, with an overall Grand Prix winner to be chosen.

Of seven choirs in the running, there was one sole Singapore choir, Eunoia Junior College Choir (directed by Dawn Yin). It stood out by being highly disciplined with excellent deportment, accurately bringing out drones, nocturnal animal cries, vocal percussion, clapping and foot stomping in Ken Steven’s Fajar Dan Senja (Dawn And Dusk). In Ko Matsushita’s In Your Heart, sung in Japanese, a lovely melting legato texture was achieved.

The primary school kids of Shanghai Little Star Choir (Liu Yawen) milked the cuteness factor for all its worth, displaying innocence and guilelessness in Youth Take Flight, accompanied by piano and percussion. Susanna Lindmark’s Song Of Hope saw Liu beating out rhythms on a cajon, the children’s good English pronunciation matched by dynamic hand movements.

Indonesia was represented by four choirs, all attired in visually stunning costumes. One Voice Spensabaya (Dinar Primasti) performed barefooted, generating a rich resonance in Jim Papoulis’ Panta Rhei. Smooth unison and rhythmic singing distinguished Luk-luk Lumbu, arranged by Budi Susanto Yohanes, where the singers’ long scarves came close to stealing the show.

Padjadjaran University Choir (Arvin Zeinullah) opened with Steven’s Fajar Dan Senja II, a variation of his earlier piece, but with added dimensions of movement, choreography and lighting, giving it an extra edge. In Bagus S. Utomo’s melodramatic Malin, a dishonourable son is turned into stone to his mother’s anguish, the West Sumatran folktale coming alive with vivid singing and acting.

Sonitus Caeli Youth Choir (Ferlian Anggy) in Balinese costumes and bare feet had the most striking tribal moves. Its orgiastic mastery of repetitive consonants in Tobin Stokes’ Ikimilikiliklik, the fan dance and hand movements of Tari Sanghyang Dedari (a Balinese folksong) were reminiscent of the fabled isle’s legendary kecak dance.

The varied pieces from Petra Christian University Choir (Onny Prihantono) included the lullaby Soleram, accompanied by glass harmonica (rubbing the rims of water-filled glasses) and Korean composer Hyo-Won Woo’s Pal-So-Seong (Eight Laughing Voices), which had singers trying to outdo each other in the art of giggling and guffawing.

There were not so many choirs from the Philippines, but Sola Gratia Chorale (Cyril Punay) was undoubtedly the most impressive. Its warm and burnished voices lending the Hallelujahs in Z.Randall Stroope’s Petrus a richness of resonance. The virtuosity was further underlined in the rapid fire of Francisco Feliciano’s famous Pamugun, the eponymous house sparrow felled by a hunter’s rifle.

Singapore’s highly versatile One Chamber Choir (SICF Artistic Director Lim Ai Hooi) performed three works before an international jury of eleven members selected Sola Gratia Chorale to receive the Grand Prix. Deservedly so, as its rare combination of refined vocal colour and range, showmanship and vivid characterisation was second to none.