OUR MEMORIES, OUR SONGS / Resonance of Singapore Singers / Review

 

OUR MEMORIES, OUR SONGS

Resonance of Singapore Singers

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (24 May 2026), 7.30 pm

This review was published in The Straits Times on 27 May 2026 with the title "Resonance of Singapore singers deftly mix nostalgic songs with new works".

Has there been a better-named vocal consort in Singapore than Resonance of Singapore (ROS) Singers? The 8-member professional and non-profit a capella group founded as recently as 2002 by Young Artist Award recipient Toh Ban Sheng has aspirations of making Singapore society better besides bringing out slickly-presented concerts.

Its latest offering, mixing well-known with the new, was another step in the right direction. Nostalgia is a strong emotion, and its first song When We Find A Child, arranged by Toh, had lots of that. The Shaker hymn Simple Gifts opened, and grafted upon it were Are You Sleeping (Frere Jacques), Ke Ren Lai (A Guest Comes) and Two Tigers, Running Fast, combining English and Chinese in busy counterpoint. All familiar, all beloved.

Toh’s creations are sophisticated, challenging to sing yet gratifyingly harmonious. In the Taiwanese Hakka song Lok Sui Tien (Rainy Day), its air of lamentation was crafted to sound like an Afro-American spiritual. Once heard, it cannot be unheard.

In Sounds of Nanyang, two popular songs, Molihua (sung in Chinese) and Dayong Sampan (Malay), merged in matrimony. This could not have taken place anywhere but Singapore. In the Anhui folksong Feng Yang Hua Gu (Flower Drum Song), the use of percussion lent it's ironic words a distinctly ethnic flavour. In both songs, the octet was joined by nine members of the ROS Youth Singers.

Western songs also found a place, with the descending note sequence of Elizabethan composer John Bennet’s Weep, O Mine Eyes being a classic study of word painting. Without knowing the lyrics, one instinctively knew this was a tragic lament. Similarly, Sergei Rachmaninov’s Bogoroditse Devo from All Night Vigil in its highest registers evoked reverence, as it is a Russian Hail Mary prayer.

In Hubert Parry’s There Is An Old Belief from Songs of Farewell, it was the promise of meeting in the next life that sustained hope for the bereaved. This belief was also reinforced in Jake Runestad’s Let My Love Be Heard, where rising voices as if lifted on the wings of angels generated the evening’s most thrilling and radiant moment.

Aaron Lee & John Lee
talk about their world premiere.

Very significant was the world premiere of bass-baritone John Lee’s Night Journeys, based on three poems by Singaporean poet Aaron Lee. The inspirations were diverse, but common to all was the quest for transcendence. Just Some Found Words dwelled on Truth, Love and Beauty, a journey leading to the idea of God and ultimate solace.

Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy was humourous, cheekily quoting from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet. The final song, Moe’uhane, a Hawaiian word meaning “soul sleep”, was also the most comforting, its warmth derived from the trust and faith that one places when crossing oceans.

Photo: Ryan Cheung

It was back to beloved Malay folksongs of our childhood to close, more of Toh’s nifty arrangements - Ikan Kekek and Geylang Si Paku – which despite their carefree vibes carried cautionary words of wisdom. Chan Mali Chan as encore seemed like the most natural choice, and that too, was rendered with much joy.

Photo: Zhang Jin Tiao

1943: THE MUSICAL EVENINGS AT CHANGI / Phan Ming Yen et al

 

1943: THE MUSICAL 

EVENINGS AT CHANGI

Talk by Phan Ming Yen et al

National Library Building

Saturday (27 September 2025)

After Singapore fell on 15 February 1942, thousands of civilians became subject to the Imperial Empire of Japan. While the local Chinese were brutally suppressed, their Western counterparts including British / European / Australian were in incarcerated in Changi Prison. Over-crowded conditions meant that thousands were housed in spaces meant for hundreds. What was life like in Changi, and what sort of music did the prisoners get to enjoy? That was the subject of this interesting illustrated talk by historical researcher and general polymath Phan Ming Yen.

The 1st floor space of the National Library
was a conducive spot for this public talk.

Assisted by actor / dramaturg Aaron Lee who did readings and pianist Natalie Ng performing excerpts from piano pieces, this was an absorbing hour-long presentation that captured the imagination, and there was never a dull moment.

The source material came mostly from The Changi Guardian, a self-published periodical started by the prisoners to report on and document happenings that took place there and then. Extracts from May 1942 to September 1943 gave an idea as to what the prisoners went through.

Despite straitened circumstances, there was humanity in Changi. Through the good graces of a certain Lieutenant Okasaki, the captives were allowed to mount musical concerts to entertain themselves. Using captured pianos, those who could perform (and there were hundreds) did so and this meant a lot to those in attendance. 

The diagram behind shows the plan
of Changi Prison in 1943.

The concerts took place twice a week in an unlikely venue: the prison’s laundry area, amid the noise of operating machinery, flushing WCs and people at work. Not exactly Dame Myra Hess at The National Gallery.

One piece heard during the New Year period was Auld Lang Syne, which also existed in its Japanese version, Hotaru no Hikari (Glow of a Firefly), hence it was not proscribed. Also performed were works by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Rachmaninov, all of which would have been familiar and played at home. One name stood out among the performers, Gordon van Hien, who in 1938 founded the Singapore Musical Society, which would be active post-War till the 1970s.

One asks the question, “Why does music matter?” One was the opportunity for silence, away from the mundane noises of the day, except for music and the laundry itself. Besides the music, there was also “Changi University”, a reference to the 4000 books that the internees had access to. By 24 September 1943, the population in Changi had numbered 3194.

All this had to end sometime. In September 1942, an illegal wireless transmitter radio was found in the possession of a prisoner, and music stopped. 57 men were interrogated and tortured at the hands of the Kempeitai; 15 died and the others were sent to Thailand’s Death Railway. It was a cruel way to end, but this was war after all. The last issue of The Changi Guardian was published in 12 October 1943. In 1946, the Singapore Musical Society that survived the war resumed its concerts.

Attending the talk were the WAGs.