OMM PROM JAZZ! / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

OMM PROM: JAZZ!

Orchestra of the Music Makers

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (7 March 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 March 2015 with the title "Monteiro makes the most of Montage".

The OMM Prom is an annual themed concert by the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) in which shorter and popular pieces of music are performed for audiences possibly encountering symphonic classical music for the first time. Its Saturday afternoon slot is family friendly and low ticket prices ensure that most Proms are sold out by the time the music starts.

This year's edition conducted by Chan Tze Law celebrated the legacy of symphonic jazz, a term which may be loosely referred to Afro-American styled popular music often employing the blues idiom written by serious composers. Consistent with the SG50 celebrations, Singaporean composer and Cultural Medallion recipient Kelly Tang's jazz piano concerto received its first performance in a version for western orchestra.

Tang's Montage was composed for jazz piano legend Jeremy Monteiro in 2010, but its original orchestration was for Chinese orchestra. The work and its 2014 revision was ecstatically received in the Singapore Chinese Orchestra's concert tour of China, and this version cements its place in the local canon of concertante works. Unlike Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F, which are fully scored for piano and orchestra, Montage is a jazz concerto in the truest sense, because the soloist is given the latitude to improvise as he pleases for a large part of the work.

Although Monteiro was seen shifting reams of paper as he played, much of these are blank sheets, opportune moments for him to weave a spell on his keyboard. This reviewer has heard this work on multiple occasions, and every performance has been different, mostly because the master had chosen to vary his tact on the occasion, either by ornamentation, dynamics or whatever caught his fancy.

This freedom also applied to his trio partners, bassist Christy Smith and drummer Tamagoh, who had their own spiels under the spotlight. The first movement was in sonata form, contrasted by the slow movement's interlude, with Samuel Phua's sensuous soprano saxophone solo replacing the original erhu. The finale's Caribbean-flavoured dance was an infectious and irrepressible expression of pure joy. Thus Montage may be viewed as three different portraits of Monteiro - the academic, the romancer and the raver.

The Monteiro trio played an encore of their own:
I've Never Been In Love Before from Guys and Dolls.

The concert opened with the suite from John Kander's musical Chicago, distinguished by Kenneth Lun's highly evocative trumpet solos and nifty moves with the wah-wah mute. Of a similar inspiration was Shostakovich's Suite for Variety Orchestra, a selection of dances from the Russian's movie music recycled as “jazz”, culminating with the saxy strains of the Waltz (from The First Echelon), which graced Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

The young orchestra was clearly enjoying itself in these light-hearted trifles, but it got serious again in George Gershwin's An American In Paris, the closest thing he wrote to a symphonic poem. This was taken at a slick and goodly pace which contributed to the hustle and bustle of this masterpiece. Despite the tricky cross rhythms and frequent abrupt shifts in dynamics, the orchestra more than coped and when have the taxi-horns sounded more in tune than this? 

The vociferous applause was rewarded with the drums of Tamagoh and the big band in Louis Prima's Sing, Sing, Sing (With A Swing), popularised by Benny Goodman. One will not get more jazzy than this. 

Composer and interpreter:
Kelly Tang with Jeremy Monteiro.

SINGAPORE CHINESE ORCHESTRA Opening Gala: Jazz You Up / Review

SCO OPENING GALA:
JAZZ YOU UP WITH JEREMY MONTEIRO
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Singapore Conference Hall
Friday (6 August 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 August 2010.

For the Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s Opening Gala of the 2010-11 season, local jazz great Jeremy Monteiro held sway like a colossus. His imprimatur as composer, arranger and piano virtuoso was to be ever present at this unusual but highly engaging concert.

Ironically it was the first few minutes – Monteiro’s Overture in C major: The Story of Singapore – which proved the least convincing. Its Coplandesque opening gestures, drumming rhythms and ethnic motifs, later giving way to National Day Parade favourite One People, One Nation, One Singapore, went down like oil and water.

It was when Monteiro eventually emerged to perform his Olympia that the evening truly began. Improvisation is the heart of jazz. Eric Watson’s arrangement offered grateful parts to Yu Jia and Sunny Wong on the pipa and erhu respectively, before Monteiro wrapped up with riffs of his own.

Where does structured composition end and improvisation begin, was a question asked of local serious composer Kelly Tang (left) in his latest piano concerto, wittily-titled Montage. Cast in three movements, his use of the Chinese orchestra was sparing to the point that the ensemble operated mostly from the peripheries while Monteiro’s trio (with bassist Christy Smith and drummer Tama Goh, below) dominated centrestage.

The slow movement, a nocturne for piano and Zhao Jian Hua’s lovely erhu, luxuriated with Chopin-like radiance and Mozartian clarity. The rhythmic exuberance of the finale, where instrumental balance was again problematic, however swept the board with its sheer energy. Plaudits go to Tang for daring to experiment (his earlier piano concerto was atonal), and this genre is well-worth exploring further.

Conductor Yeh Tsung (left) doubled up ad-hoc emcee, proselytising as slickly as a tele-evangelist. With good reason, as in Monteiro’s Asiana, more of SCO’s soloists had their moment in the spotlight. Yin Zhi Yang and Tan Chye Tiong on dizi, Xu Hui’s all-too brief guzheng solo all shone, while the excellent Han Lei whose guanzi could have easily been Kenny G’s saxophone. Kong Hong Wei’s Summer Palace, also with Han, provided the token piece of chinoiserie.

Tony Makarome’s arrangement of Victor Feldman’s Seven Steps To Heaven closed a lively evening, not before Tama Goh’s wild drummer act brought down the house. Monteiro, who could pass off as Fred Flintstone’s twin, offered the theme from The Flintstones as an encore. Cartoon music at the SCO? Notch up a new first for the record books.