GO LOCAL!
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR
Ding Yi Music Company
China Cultural Centre Theatre
Sunday (9 February 2025)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 February 2025 with the title "Ding Yi's Chinese New Year concert is a musical joyride".
Ding Yi Music Company’s annual Chinese New Year concerts, supported by the Chinese Cultural Centre on Queen Street, are often remembered for their heady combination of artistry, informality and fun. This year’s offering conducted by Dedric Wong, which had a significant contribution of Hong Kong talent, was no different.
When Law Wai Lun’s very camp Happy New Year medley opened a concert instead of closing it, one knew a musical joyride was in the offing. The big band treatment of God Of Wealth Comes (财神到) and Welcoming Spring Flowers (迎春花) and with Gong Xi Gong Xi (恭喜恭喜) turned into a tango, these overplayed seasonal favourites became hard to dislike.
Two members of Hong Kong’s Windpipe Chinese Music Ensemble were guest performers in this concert. In Lui Man Shing’s light and catchy The Lion Dance, based on Cantonese tunes, Leung Kin Ping helmed the highest pitched huqin, the gaohu.
He later exchanged it for a violin for Hong Kong composer Alfred Wong Hok-yeung’s Tango in Temple Street. Obliged to play demanding cadenzas which included numerous portamenti (sliding between pitches) at its beginning and close, the violin attempted to sound like an erhu. Here was a curious case of reverse appropriation which worked pretty well, being very idiomatic on this occasion.
A touch of nostalgia was afforded with the introduction of local jazz singer-songwriter Miss Lou (卢佩莘 Lou Peixin), hailed as Singapore’s Glamour Vintage Songbird, for three songs. Attired alluringly in a cheongsam, The Spring Breeze Kisses My Face (春风吻上我的脸,made popular in the 1950s by Yao Li) sounded totally inviting in a jazz setting by Chan Nga Man.
In A Spray of Plum Blossoms (一剪梅, championed by Fei Yu-ching in 1980s Taiwan), she reveled in its long-held high notes. Her prowess as composer came in the original composition Qing Ying Feng Ying (轻盈风影, Fresh Air), a love song which sounded even more convincing in its Mandarin version.
The second of Windpipe Ensemble’s members was percussionist Chak Yuet Man, who partnered Ding Yi’s own kitchen department specialist Low Yik Hang in Alfred Wong’s Once Upon A Time In China. Inspired by the martial arts of Wong Fei Hong, this vibrant music saw a pitched battle between both drummers. They were unfortunately placed behind the orchestra, thus partially obstructing what would have been an epic view.
As if that were not loud enough, the concert proper concluded with Nie Er’s highly popular and suitably rowdy Dance of the Golden Snake, as arranged by Tang Jianping, which raised the roof for the new “year of the snake”. As an encore, Miss Lou was trotted out for another of her original works, the jaunty Guo Nian Jiu Shi Jiang (过年就是酱, This Is CNY). With many local references to family dinner reunions, it closed with a lusty cheer of “Huat ah!”
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