DISAPPEARING SERIES: THE LAST EPISODE / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

DISAPPEARING SERIES:

THE LAST EPISODE

Ding Yi Music Company

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Friday (6 June 2025), 7.30 pm

This review was published in The Straits Times on 10 June 2025 with the title "A timely reminder to celebrate traditional practices".

The Disappearing Series concerts by Ding Yi Music Company has over the years examined local arts and traditions that are on the cusp of becoming extinct. These in-concert documentaries combining film, story-telling and original music on Chinese instruments have become art-pieces in their own right.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Ironically, this 70-minute concert conducted by Dedric Wong De Li called time on an invaluable part of the company’s creative output. With research by Jesvin Yeo, filmography by Sandra Sek and direction by Jeremiah Choy, three diverse yet often taken for granted aspects of our cultural heritage were explored.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

The opening artform was the painstaking creation of lion heads used for the traditional Chinese lion dance, perfected by artisan Henry Ng. The accompanying music by Tan Yuting entitled Crafting Lions, Writing Dreams took the form of a four-movement suite, outlining the process of inspiration, fabrication, ornamention, and all the way to the final product.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Percussive beats, typically heard during festive processions dominated, before culminating in the actual dance, which was earthy and raucous in feel. Ng made a personal appearance centrestage, painting the lion head in brushstrokes of different shades but leaving the piece uncompleted, symbolic of the need for his work to be continued as long as it takes.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Alicia De Silva’s Love and Legacy dwelled on Malay songkok crafting in the hands of aged headpiece maker Abdul Wahab bin Abdullah. The use of a small gamelan set of metallophones, struck by mallets by the composer herself, lent an authentic flavour to the subject.

Ostinatos and minimalism heard on pipa and zhongruan simulated repeating patterns on the worked fabric. Although Wahab was not physically present, his voiceover established the craft as a familial heirloom passed down from his father. There was, however, an uneasy sense that he represented the final generation of this handicraft’s perpetuity.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

De Silva then seamlessly moved to the angklungs, resonating wooden rattlers which accompanied the final segment focused on rattan-weaving in furniture making. This was Cultural Medallion recipient Eric Watson’s A Palm for All Seasons. His evocation of nature with solo dizi in full flight was also a salute to the rattan palm, from which pieces lying at many homes were fashioned.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

The mellow marimba, whose bars and resonators are also made from wood, featured prominently in the music as well. The mood of the music became decidedly more light-hearted, reflecting the loving bond between furniture maker Chen Foon Kee and his wife Lee Joon as they plied their craft onstage together.

All three works resembled mini-symphonies in conception and execution, a conscious reaction to the synthesis represented by these living artforms hanging by a thread. As a closing gesture, a final coda to the concert - and the series - summated what we risk losing in the relentless pursuit of 21st century living. Ding Yi’s Disappearing Series will most certainly be missed.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre

Exhibition in the foyer:

EARTH: UNHEARD / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

EARTH: UNHEARD 

Ding Yi Music Company 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Sunday (20 April 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 April 2025 with the title "Returning to the basics and celebrating earth".

The secret of appreciating chamber music is to look beyond the big sound of massed instruments, paying attention instead to details found in individual instruments. In this same spirit, Ding Yi Music Company’s invitation was to put aside worries of life and listen to the song of the earth, which has far more to offer than meets the eye. 

Photo: Moonrise Studio

This varied two-hour long concert was loving look at folk and ethnic traditions, encapsulated in five varied works curated by Ding Yi concertmaster Fred Chan Hong Wei and artistic advisor, banhu specialist Hu Yu from Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music. 

The evening opened with Hu’s Echoes of the Mountain which featured just nine players. The songs and dances (shan ge) of highland peoples were relived in this contemporary but tonal work, with melodic interest provided by Chan and Chin Yen Choong’s huqins and Ng Hsien Han’s dizi. Alternating between contemplative and animated sections, the music was a celebration of a way of life that risks being lost forever. 

In Yang Yong’s Three Folk Sentiments, musical scenes of village life were accompanied by projections of Chinese art. In Rising Sun, a finely-balanced heterophony was honed by Hu’s banhu joining the ranks. 

His solo in the central Lament, supported by the plaintive xiao and guan, was a moving portrait of sadness and deep thought. Comic Interlude, which closed the suite, was not so much a playful scherzo but a bantering conversation between close friends. 

The most modern and abstract work on show was Taiwanese composer Tsai Cheng-che’s Mahakala, which was ritualistic and drew from various Asian spiritual movements including Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism and their Chinese derivatives. 

With the hall in semi-darkness, Yvonne Tay’s guzheng was joined by Ng Hsien Han’s dizi and Wong Wai Kit’s zhongruan, trooping from the wings. They had different chants to intone in addition to the drones and groans with the bold bowing of guzheng strings. Calming and hypnotic, the audience was witness to some religious ceremony taking place. 

Receiving the loudest cheers were two concertante works with full ensemble conducted by Dedric Wong De Li. Young Artist Award recipient Wang Chenwei’s Barong Dance is destined to be a popular favourite. Like his other Nanyang music, it used gamelan scales, in this case representing the lion-like Barong (benign guardian of the forest) and Rangda (malevolent witch-queen), both pitched in an eternal battle between good and evil. 

This well-known Balinese dance could not have had a better orchestral representation. The bigger issue is whether the imposing sheng solo by Soh Swee Kiat, with wind power substituting for percussion prowess, could ever be surpassed. 

The final work was Zhou Juan’s Polyphonic Returns, an impressive show with Hu as banhu soloist which traversed from gentle serenade to rapturous dance rhapsody. Much like the first work, this was a clarion call for a return to the basics, where the simpler things in life really matter.

ECONCERT / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

ECONCERT 

Ding Yi Music Company 

Esplanade Recital Music 

Wednesday (23 October 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 October 2024 with the title "Eco-themed concert a wake-up call about waste".

Some of Ding Yi Music Company’s most interesting concerts over the years have focused on Singapore’s history and disappearing local culture, but more recently the ensemble has turned to highlighting environmental issues. 

The second of its ECOncerts, directed by resident conductor Dedric Wong De Li, was about the high toll exacted by the generation of waste. Stage-directed by Ang Xiao Ting, with music composed by Malaysian Yii Kah Hoe and Singaporean Avik Chari, the 75-minute concert was inspired by the documentary feature Wasted (www.wasted.film) by Eco-Business which highlighted a modern-day dilemma resulting from rampant consumerism. 

Much of the concert’s first third was devoted to accompanying film excerpts featuring vast vistas and mountains of garbage from rising Asian economies, including Vietnam, South Korea and India. “Nature creates no waste. Waste is a human invention” was the overriding message, and so was, “What we throw away doesn’t go away”. The music was dissonant, depicting a bleak landscape with ultimate despair being the foreseeable future. 

The chamber ensemble of Chinese instruments performed within an arts installation created by Alecia Neo, which include an amorphous pile of plastic flakes and fake rocks, and a barren tree in the foreground, a la Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot. The play of darkness and light, representing futility and hope, by lighting designer Liu Yong Huay also provided a suitable ambience for the action to take place. 

Some hard truths about recycling were presented, including the stark statistic that less than ten percent of waste discarded in recycle bins was actually recyclable. Depressing. The concert’s second third had no projected visuals, instead allowing more of the music to be better appreciated. 

In Nature’s Realm – Sounds Of Waste, Chin Yen Choong’s jinghu and Tan Yong Yaw’s yangqin was heard over a cacophonous counterpoint provided by rustling of bags and wrappings, banging of bottles and crushing of cups, all plastic, of course. 

Symbolism was also strong, with composer Yii emerging from within the audience to rake the plastic flakes, forming a Zen sand garden in the process, and playing tunes on the xiao (vertical flute, crafted from bamboo) before disappearing offstage. All this while accompanied by zhongruan and bowed strings, most likely a sign of regeneration. 

In Humans Produce Waste: Recycling Concerto came the concert’s much-awaited climax, with Bekhzod Oblayorov and Wong Wai Kit playing on a sustainable cello and zhongruan respectively. These instruments were created from recycled cardboard, designed by the team of Alvin Chea Hong Shen and Chea Wei Xian from Trio Packaging. While not quite as sonorous as originals of wood, these were obviously works in progress. 

As the score moved ever so gradually from discordance to concordance, from dark desolation to bright illumination, its denouement was an optimistic but guarded conclusion. As long as we pay heed to our environment and better manage our resources, the wake-up call provided by this thought-provoking concert should not go to waste.

CHAMBER SOIREE / Photographs from Ding Yi Music Company's Fundraising Dinner

Ding Yi Music Company, Singapore's only professional Chinese chamber ensemble, held its annual fundraising dinner at the Parkroyal Collection, Marina Square Floral Ballroom on Monday (14 October 2024). Attended by the cognoscenti and high society of Chinese music circles, it was a glitzy affair with good food, hard liquour and lovely performances from the classy outfit and celebrity guest performers. A total of $450,000 was raised to further the cultural, educational and outreach work. For its invaluable work in furthering Chinese instrumental music and culture in Singapore, one can only conclude, "Job well done. Keep up the good work!"

Some of the pre-dinner performances.

The VIPs line up for a group photo.

You can't get a bigger name than
Yeh Tsung to kick off the music-making.

Then it was the turn of Dedric Wong Deli to lead.

Bekhzod Oblayorov plays an eco-cello,
made from recycled waste paper. 

I was seated at the music educators' table, with
Professors Ho Chee Kong & Peter Tornquist
from Yong Siew Toh Conservatory.

Ding Yi erhu player Chen Ning,
SCO Associate Conductor Moses Gay &
FrancisTan, NUS Wind Symphony Music Director

Chua Ai Liang, Ding Yi Board Member
& Lee Ming-Yen, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

SCO Composer-in-Residence
Wang Chenwei samples the moutai

Celebrity guest performers, Eric Chua M.P.
leading singer Claire Teo.

Donors getting their awards.

Yeh Tsung always looks dapper on the keys.

After Mrs Goh Chok Tong sang,
the donations surged from
$400,000 to $450,000. Power vocals.

Here is our colourful table.
In absentia: Prof Chan Tze Law.