CHASING LIGHT: DING YI X DICK LEE 70 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

CHASING LIGHT

DING YI  X  DICK LEE 70

Ding Yi Music Company

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (26 July 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 July 2026 with the title "Ding Yi celebrates Dick Lee's wide-ranging musical legacy in birthday tribute".

National Day is around the corner, and one is guaranteed to hear more than a few performances of Home (1998) in its various versions. However, did one know that its composer singer-songwriter Dick Lee wrote far more than that, besides his iconic musicals in English, Beauty World (1988), Fried Rice Paradise (1991) and Forbidden City (2002)?

This special concert by Ding Yi Music Company conducted by Dedric Wong celebrated Lee’s 70th birthday with a programme wholly dedicated to his songs in Cantonese and Mandarin. Many of these do not even have English titles. Arrangements for Chinese instrumental ensemble by eight composers from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China were songs “reimagined”, and have never been previously heard by Lee himself.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Concert director Jet Ho’s conception of the evening was a chronological one, built around a sequence of filmed interviews with Lee, detailing a life story when he began writing songs in Chinese. His 1990 relocation to Japan was pivotal, as he was soon ushered into the world of Hong Kong Cantopop by Sandy Lam. He was introduced to the “Four Heavenly Kings” - Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok and Leon Lai – and he composed songs for all of them.

Dick Lee with Sandy Lam, 1991

Attended by a full-house of mostly the boomer demographic, this was more than an evening of nostalgia. It was a journey through the “Golden Age of Cantopop”, before the British colony’s handover to mainland China, and viewing the genre through new lenses.

Jessie Yeong & Skye Sirena
Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

The concert was fronted by four singers, Jessie Yeong (from Malaysia), Lennerd Lim (Malaysia), Skye Sirena (Singapore), Wysom Wong (Singapore), each bringing their own style to the songs. Yeong exuded sensuality in songs sang by Sandy Lam, Dawn and Ye Hua (Night Flower). Skye shined in Anita Mui’s slow ballad Ru Yue (Like Night) and Kit Chan’s Den Le You Den (Still Waiting).

Lennerd Lim & Wysom Wong
Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Lim exuded “pretty boy” vibes as he roused the audience in Jeff Chang’s Mandopop Duo Xiang (Longing). It was Wong’s crooning and more leisurely manner in Andy Lau’s Jue Dui Zhai Hu Ni (Absolutely Care For You), however, that gained the most traction. Together, the two men courted and rocked the house in Love Is Cha Cha Cha.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Besides accompanying, there were ample opportunities for Ding Yi’s musicians to shine as soloists. In Tracy Huang’s Everything I Know, Koh Yu Jie (erhu) and Yvonne Tay (guzheng) stole the show with purely instrumentals, while Lyu Sih-Ying’s dizi was always on hand to lend soloistic colour to the songs.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

After the Snow.Wolf.Lake Medley, it was the man of the hour Dick Lee himself who came forward to sing and tickle the ivories, In Jacky Cheung’s Love Is Eternal and Leslie Cheung’s Zhui (Chase), he exhibited a voice still in full fettle and an irrepressible presence. An encore of the ubiquitous Home, sung by all the singers and the audience, closed the evening on a nationalistic high.

Dick Lee is Singapore’s Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John all rolled into one.

Photos: Ding Yi Music Company

Happy Three Score and Ten,
Dick Lee!

TRAVERSING / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

TRAVERSING

Ding Yi Music Company

Victoria Concert Hall

Saturday (11 April 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 April 2026 with the title "Eclectic programme allows musicians to shine in Ding Yi concert".

The title of Ding Yi Music Company’s first evening of its concert season had to do with eclecticism and transcending geographical and cultural boundaries. Led by its chief artistic mentor Tsung Yeh, who regularly helmed similar programmes with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, the concert was greater than the sum of its parts.

Tsung Yeh is the Conductor Emeritus
of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra
Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Opening was the world premiere of Su Xiao’s short tone poem Sing A Pura. Beginning quietly with an air of mystery, the dizi gently rose above the percussion’s rhythmic accompaniment. The lilting dance that came after summed up the Chinese composer’s impressions of the city-state – lively, urbane and somewhat exotic.

More substantial was New York-based Singaporean composer Koh Cheng Jin’s Tang - Moonlight Fragrance, a single-movement concerto for orchestra inspired by Tang poetry. Huang Hsu-Lei’s long and impassioned dizi solo set the mood of contemplation. The demanding obbligato piano part with Ning An initially began as part of the general ensemble but soon grew in stature as the work picked up in tempo and volume.

Replacing guzheng and yangqin for creating specific sound textures, the part also included scraping the insides of the Steinway grand. Its percussive effects and virtuoso figurations also fueled the ethnic dance as the music lurched to a vigorous and wild close.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

The most demanding solo of the evening was by Yvonne Tay, whose guzheng worked overtime in Tang Jian Ping’s concerto Goddess of the Luo River. In a variegated score of multiple scenes, she cast a spellbinding thrall, from the gentlest of plinks to sweeping swathes of sound that rose above the orchestral throng. She literally personified the work’s subject, a figure of feminine grace and fearless self-empowerment.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

After a first half which did not pander to popular tastes, the concert’s latter half was to be much lighter. Bohemian cellist-composer David Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody Op.68, arranged by Jon Lin Chua, was the virtuoso vehicle for Ding Yi’s Uzbek cellist Bekhzod Oblayorov. If the music sounded familiar, that was because it used the same Magyar folk sources as a number of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. As with those florid piano fantasies, the cello was obliged to jump through many hoops for an enjoyable romp.

Eric Watson’s Celtic Knots, receiving its world premiere, was an engaging succession of Scottish, Irish and Welsh melodies. Given the modal nature of the songs, among them Suo Gan (heard in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun), these translated very well for Chinese instrumental treatment. And one has not lived without hearing the suona imitating bagpipes or Londonderry Air played on pipa.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

Closing the evening was the 1950s Chinese Socialist-Realist and populist Youth Piano Concerto, concocted by a committee of composers including Liu Shikun, Sun Yilin, Huang Xiaofei and Pan Yiming. Ning An returned as the brilliant soloist in three movements influenced by Russians Dmitri Kabalevsky and Sergei Rachmaninov but with Chinese characteristics. It was so well received that its final four minutes had to be encored.

Photo: Ding Yi Music Company

GO LOCAL! HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT 2026 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

GO LOCAL!

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT

Ding Yi Music Company

Chinese Cultural Centre Theatre

Friday (6 March 2026)

Chinese New Year has officially ended with Chap Goh Mei (night of the fifteenth moon) behind us, but that was no reason for Ding Yi Music Company not to celebrate the new spring season and the year of the horse. Its annual Chinese New Year concert, led by Resident Conductor Dedric Wong had that well-tried and tested formula of celebratory music, virtuosic concertante works and a sassy singer to spice things up.

The evening opened with Hong Kong composer Alfred Wong Hok-Yeung’s Music Roaming By The Bay, an overture that was upbeat and rhythmic. High spirits ruled in this jaunt, which depicted the dramatic scenery to be had at Shenzhen Bay (Deep Bay), presumably viewed from the New Territories side of the water.

Wang Rui’s Blooming Flower was a slow and meditative number, which showcased the lovely string tone of erhu soloist Ding Yi’s Chen Ning. More familiar was Lu Wenchen’s Autumn Moon Over a Calm Lake, a Cantonese melody where xiao soloist Ho Siu-cheong from Hong Kong’s Windpipe Chinese Ensemble held court. It was interesting to note that Yang Chun Lin’s arrangement had some decidedly Western harmonies.

The most spectacular concertante work was shared by three composers, with Yang Ming, Jiang Chun Yang and Jin Sha’s The Bamboo and the Pine. Not sure how composition by committee (such as the infamous Yellow River Concerto) actually worked but this symphonic poem with obbligato parts was legitimately brilliant and exciting. Wang Yan (erhu) and Xue Qing (daruan) from Sichuan’s Charisma Ensemble (the Chinese instrumental section of the Sichuan Symphony) did the honours, with no little panache and virtuosity.

Quite different from the works that preceded it was Malaysian composer Chow JunYi’s Contempo, which employed a modern drum-set manned by Low Yick Hang. This was a modern showpiece, updated to 21st century popular styles. Jazzy it was not, but bristling with virile energy it certainly was with George Lam’s Wong Fei Hung martial arts theme being quoted.

No Ding Yi CNY concert is complete without some young and good looking singer closing the show. That was the remit of Mediacorp radio station 933 deejay Gao Mei Gui, who was once a song competition participant and percussionist. 

Her bantering with conductor Wong was a tad endearing, while her contributions of Jerry C’s Xiao Xing Yun (A Little Happiness), Tanya Chua’s Wo (I) and Joseph Khoo’s Zhu Fu Ni (Blessing You) added the light-hearted spark needed for an ebullient finish.

There was some half-hearted audience contribution to the singing and the final song closed with a lusty “huat ah!” by all in attendance. 2026 is already looking like a bleak year for world peace, but there is little harm in hoping for fortunes to turn the right way.

Huat ah!!!

HUAT AH! DING YI MUSIC COMPANY CELEBRATES CHINESE NEW YEAR

HUAT AH! That's what we Chinese (Hokkiens in particular) shout as a cheer in a hope of fortune and prosperity. That was the ringing refrain as Ding Yi Music Company celebrated Chinese New Year with a traditional lohei (tossing of the raw fish / yusheng salad). Ding Yi has always had this informal celebration at the Chinese Cultural Centre, with a summary of the past year's events and highlights, and its traditional Chinese New Year concert. This year was no different.

Ding Yi chairman Lau Kam Yuen
gives his welcome address.

Ding Yi Resident Conductor Dedric Wong speaks.

Ding Yi's new General Manager Tay Zhi Wen
is introduced for the first time.

Ding Yi board members with musicians
Chen Ning (erhu), Wong Wai Kit (ruan)
and Bekhzod Oblayorov (cello)

Lohei begins. The ingredients are added.

The tossing begins. Huat ah!

Soon the concert will begin.

Review of the concert here:

pianomania: GO LOCAL! HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT 2026 / Ding Yi Music Company / Review