MUSICAL MOSAICS: SINGAPORE UNSUNG / Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

MUSICAL MOSAICS: 

SINGAPORE UNSUNG

Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (1 August 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 August 2026 with the title "Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra turns 10, celebrates with Singapore works".

When the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra (ACSO) gave its first concert in August 2016, it performed the popular Butterfly Lovers and Yellow River Concertos, both by Chinese composers. The mission to promote works by Asian composers had evolved such that by its 10th anniversary, the chosen repertoire was wholly Singaporean.

Led by co-music directors Dedric Wong and Adrian Chiang, the landmark concert was a celebration of the people who made and defined Singapore, not statesmen, politicians or history-makers, but good ordinary folk who risk being sidelined or forgotten. It opened with Wang Chenwei’s Samsui Women, a vigourous work song that quoted the Cantonese melody Ping Hu Qiu Yue (Autumn Moon Over A Calm Lake), later briefly and cleverly merged in counterpoint with Rasa Sayang.

A drum-set provided a driving beat to Terrence Wong’s Fortitude, where 19-year-old soloist Dante Tan let rip on soprano and alto saxophone, with the latter reveling on a long-held note at its climax. The work was a tribute to our hardworking Pioneer and Merdeka generations.

In Syafiqah ‘Adha Sallehin’s Everyday Guardians: Three Portraits Of Service, three groups of civil servants were lauded. Zulkifli Mohamed Amin’s accordion portrayed resoluteness and constancy in The Nurse – Steady Hands, contrasted with Madhavan Kalaichelvan’s swashbuckling veena in The Firefighter – Into The Flames, a show of courage and fearlessness. Finally, Joyce Poh’s dizi was calm and decorous for The Teacher – Light In The Classroom, with a modal melody that resembled a folksong.

Lyricism and tenderness came to the fore in Germaine Goh’s Pillars Of Strength: Tribute To Migrant Domestic Workers, where warm tones of the brass were reinforced by Alan Kartik’s French horn solo. Goh herself played on the grand piano, a calm and reassuring presence.

Jazz legend Jeremy Monteiro’s Fortitude was a completely different work from Wong’s earlier number. Originally scored for wind band, its orchestral version was built on a series of chorales, all in praise of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015), a force of personality always the exception to the rule.

Founder-director of Voices of Singapore (VOS) mega-choir, Darius Lim was the soloist in his Between Heaven and Earth which received its world premiere. Using the model found in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia (Op.80), his passionately Romantic piano part ushered in the 34 members of VOS Ladies Choir who sang in English, expressing his aspirations and pondering the purpose of life. This was the score that came closest to popular Disney film music.

Closing the concert was Ralph Emmanuel Lim’s Singapura Tapestries, a fantasy that brought together two very different local songs, Dick Lee’s Bunga Sayang from the musical Kampong Amber and Shabir Sulthan’s Singai Naadu (Singapore My Country) sung in Tamil.

Singapore’s racial harmony was further emphasised in the encore, which included an audience sing-along for the 2003 National Day Parade song One United People by Joshua Wan, popularised by Stefanie Sun. A nation that sings together stays together.

SING60: VOICES OF THE NATIONAL GALA CONCERT / Voices of Singapore / Review

 

SING60: VOICES OF A NATION 

GALA CONCERT

Voices of Singapore

Esplanade Concert Hall

Wednesday (8 October 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 October 2025 with the title "Voices of Singapore celebrates sixth anniversary with pleasurable concert".

There is no vehicle of musical expression as personal as one’s voice, and music-making becomes pleasure multiplied manifold when people sing together. That is the credo of Voices of Singapore (VOS), the nation’s largest singing organisation, with more than 2000 members in 30 separate choirs.

VOS, founded by choral conductor and composer Darius Lim, celebrated its 6th anniversary with an enjoyable mega-concert showcasing over 400 voices led by nine different choral conductors. While diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI) has become divisive in certain nations, these are the very qualities that hold Singapore together, evident by variety of musical items on show.

The evening kicked off with VOS Children’s Choir (led by Lim Jing Xuan) singing Liong Kit Yeng’s Little Red Dot, a fun piece that recounted what makes Singapore unique – local food and the MRT. Nostalgia reigned when VOS Ladies Choir (Stephenie Lee) with Jeremy Wong on pipa took on a Mandarin medley of Xinyao by Liang Wern Fook, Tan Kian Chin and Bok Sek Ying, Shi Shui Chang Liu (细水长流) and Xiao Ren Wu De Xin Sheng (小人物的心声), songs which ruled the waves during the 1980s.

School children of a certain age will remember the Malay words to Zubir Said’s Semoga Bahagia, but with VOS City Chorus (Chong Wai Lun) and soloist Syakirah Noble, the unusually harmonised song took on jazzy vibes that were unthinkable years ago. Similarly, Malay song Dayung Sampan sung by VOS Men (Justin Goh) and accompanied by Artusik Multiethnic Ensemble had an unexpected martial edge. These fresh twists brought a new gloss to these old favourites.

Arguably the evening’s most entertaining item was the VOS Youth Choir (Vicknesvari Vadivalagan) and soloist Thirupurasundari S in Tamil songs Munnaeru Vaalibaa and Balleilakka. Backed by the Singapore Indian Orchestra and Choir, and three sari-clad dancers, this came close to a full-blown Kollywood scene at its most melodramatic. VOS Children’s Choir returned in Darius Lim’s Dragon Dance of Shang, a song with a strong film music feel accompanied by projected cartoon animations.

The second half, accompanied by SING60 Band, featured all of VOS’s community choirs, including VOS Starlight Voices (Tham Pei Wen) featuring special needs children in Lim’s touching Our Story. VOS Silver Voices (Sean Foo) rolled back the decades with Chen Gexin’s Rose, Rose I Love You while the unauditioned VOS Chorus of the People (Lim) were empowered by the words of The Power of the Dream and We Will Get There. Purely a cappella was Eric Whitacre’s Sleep, beautifully sung by VOS State Choirs (Lim) while chilling by the glow of candlelight.

There was also an audience sing-along led by Voices of COMO Lifestyle Group, National Kidney Foundation and Coronation Singers (Gerald Tan) in If We Hold On Together, You Raise Me Up and Dancing Queen.

For the grand finale, all the VOS Choirs came together for what must be Singapore’s second national anthem: Home. The biggest surprise was the unscripted appearance by the man himself, Dick Lee in the flesh, singing his perennial classic. The abiding take-home of the evening: a people that sings together stays together.

THE PLANETS. RITE OF SPRING / Orchestra of the Music Makers / Review

 

THE PLANETS. RITE OF SPRING

Orchestra of the Music Makers

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (11 July 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 July 2025 with the title "OMM raises roof with Holst and Stravinsky".

When it comes to orchestral blockbusters, it is hard to beat the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM). The Singapore Symphony plays monumental works too, but these are spread over the course of a full year. OMM has just four to five concerts annually, thus offering super-sized meals to digest at each sitting. From past experiences with works by Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner and Leonard Bernstein, local listeners have been totally up for it.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Its latest concert, led by American conductor by Tito Munoz, recent music director of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra (Arizona), featured two great and influential classics of the early 20th century. English composer Gustav Holst’s The Planets (1917), which has greatly impacted modern movie scores, opened the show.

There is hardly music as loud as its opening movement, Mars The Bringer of War, hammered home with a vehemence which defined the rest of the evening. Venus The Bringer of Peace and Saturn The Bringer of Old Age showed the orchestra equally adept in slower and less blustery music, bringing out instrumental detail before building up to concentrated climaxes.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Mercury The Winged Messenger revelled in quicksilver playing, highlighting high registers of silky strings, celesta and a pair of harps. Uranus The Magician had a spirit of jocularity, musical sorcery at its most canny. The suite’s most famous movement, Jupiter The Bringer of Jollity, with its grandstanding central hymn later set to I Vow To Thee, My Country, was milked for all its worth.

Photo: Yong Junyi

The most moving moments came in the still and quiet finale, Neptune The Mystic, a nebulous depiction of cosmic dust giving way to the offstage siren call from the 42 women of the Voices of Singapore Ladies Choir (Darius Lim, Chorusmaster). It was hauntingly ethereal, raising many a goosebump before wafting into the nether reaches

Earth was not one of Holst’s celestial bodies, but the subject of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913), which occupied the concert’s second half. Also conducted from memory and without baton by Munoz, this was arguably the better of two superb performances, as the orchestra had more than warmed up.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Guo Siping’s excellent bassoon solo clung on thin air for what seemed like an eternity, before woodwinds and brass jostled for dominance in the introduction of Adoration of the Earth. Pizzicato strings entered and ushered in the infamous pounding rhythm of Augurs of Spring, beginning of the mayhem which brought on the riotous fisticuffs at its Paris premiere.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Admiration arises when one peruses the score and learn how technically and rhythmically complex the score is, and to see and hear over a hundred musicians with their thorny individual parts and rise with fearless abandon to the challenge together.

To nitpick for rough spots in a performance of a work that is classical music’s greatest rough spot is plain futile. To witness The Sacrificial Dance, of the chosen one in throes of terminal convulsions, is to experience the most thrilling of musical rides. OMM has done it again.

Photo: Yong Junyi

Victoria Memorial Hall & Theatre
and UOB Tower illuminated
for National Day.

Season of Songs from the Heart / NUSS Choir / Review

SEASON OF SONGS FROM THE HEART
NUSS Choir
University Cultural Centre
Wednesday (17 November 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 19 November 2010.

It is never too old to join a choir and make a joyful noise. That is the message of the 50-strong National University of Singapore Society Choir, comprising singers of the senior citizen retiree category, many of whom prominent members of society.

One is struck by its sprightliness and attentiveness. Singing 18 songs mostly from memory, the singers obliged what choirmasters yearn for but do not often get – they all looked up. It was not too difficult, as its leader Darius Lim is a strapping youth who could have been their grandson. Choirs do not always have to be led by crusty old maids.

Opening with Zulu song Siyahamba, their robust a cappella voices were amplified to advantage. The song arrangements were friendly, opening with unison voices and later branching into simple divisi for harmonic variation. Singing in Latin, the choir sounded comfortable in Laudate Dominum and Gaudete, but Mediaeval Baebes (below) they were not.

There was rawness, as in Ave Verum Corpus / Agnus Dei where the choir struggled with pitch, and there were untrained voices standing out, but there was no doubting its commitment and enthusiasm. The women were a more homogeneous group, and their Japanese song Kimi O No Sete was a delight. The 12-men were weaker in Wherever You Are but held their own. Together they gave conductor Lim’s own Life (below), a new commission, a touch of Broadway glitz.

Christmas songs seemed appropriate, and the choir steered clear from the more commercial kind. Would You Bring A Song and Christmas Isn’t Chritsmas benefited from meaningful lyrics, while Voices of Winter had no words, the sound effects, oohs and aahs told an evocative story. The lighting for One Single Light was flawed on the outset, making this look like some Halloween number.

Songs from the heart featured popular favourites. While Memory (Cats) was tainted with overfamiliarity, Climb Every Mountain (The Sound of Music) was both uplifting and touching. The audience was also given a chance to sing along in You Raise Me Up and Mandarin song Peng You (Friends). Say A Little Prayer and encore Candle On The Water brought out giggles and chuckles with the simple choreography, and seven couples within the choir linking their hands in one united voice. Not highbrow stuff but plainly engaging.