SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL BAND FESTIVAL CLOSING CONCERT / SAF Central Band / Review

 

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

BAND FESTIVAL 2026

CLOSING CONCERT

SAF Central Band

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Sunday (26 July 2026)

The closing concert of the 10th Singapore International Band Festival was given by the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Central Band, opening with the National Anthem, Zubir Said’s Majulah Singapura. Conducted by ME4 Koh Kai Jie (Associate Director), this preceded the concert’s opening work, Kelly Tang’s Three Portraits for Wind Band which he also led.

In three continuous movements, the opening Fanfare was martial and heroic, a wholly apt portrayal of patriotism with National Day not far away. Excellent intonation and tightness of ensemble distinguished this and the works to come. The Chorale that followed was none other than Singapura (I much prefer the alternative version, with David Lim’s words Thee I Honour, Thee I Adore over the sappy Sunny Island, Pretty Flowers version), wordless for once and subjected to a variation or two. The closing March relived the pomp and circumstances of Elgar, with Percy Grainger and John Williams thrown into the mix, bringing the work to a stirring close.

More modern in feel was American composer David Gillingham’s Heroes, Lost and Fallen, now led by ME5 Ignatius Wang (Director). Beginning quietly with bells, piano and xylophone producing tinkling sonorities, this slow introduction led into music of wider emotional range and orchestral colour. The music recounted conflicts with struggles, sacrifice, loss and remembrance, as wars in service of the nation do. The alternation of calm and violence also provided moments for reflection before closing in a reassuring C major, a harbinger of hope and harmony.

Next was Percy Grainger’s Colonial Song as arranged by R.Mark Rogers. Pianists who know this as a solo piece often find its introduction difficult to find its voice, but no such worries for the winds, which sound far richer than a keyboardist can hope for. The big tune carried by tenor saxophone and later trumpet is one of the best original melodies Grainger wrote, its glorious climax representing the benign face of the empire on which the sun never set.

CPT Jose Toranza, Assistant Director of the world-renowned “The President’s Own” US Marine Band, guest conducted in John Philip Sousa’s Solid Men To The Front, one of the March King’s less well-known marches relative to The Stars and Stripes Forever, Semper Fidelis or Washington Post. It was nevertheless a rousing, almost jazzy and foot-tapping reading with suitable bluster fully in sync with the earlier martial works about heroes, bravery and selflessness (something which the current POTUS has never known and will never know).

The hour-long concert closed with Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome, in an idiomatic wind transcription by Yoshihiro Kimura led by conductor Wang. For this, the SAFCB was joined by ten members of the Osaka Shion Wind Orchestra, Japan’s oldest wind band. Respighi was one of music’s greatest orchestrators, and even if strings were absent here, the final outcome was no less gripping due to the sheer ebullience and responsiveness of the players.

The opening Pines of the Villa Borghese bristled with the bustle of children’s games, a carnival of mischief, followed by the more sober Pines of the Catacombs, where clarinet and trumpet solos provided moments of pensiveness. Koh Kai Jie’s piano part ushered in Pines of the Janiculum, its haunting beauty matched by the song of nightingales (the first instance of recorded sounds making an appearance in a classical work). It was left for the inexorable march of Roman armies in Pines of the Appian Way to close the concert on an energised and spirited high. Singapore’s finest professional wind orchestra has done it again.