MUSICAL MOSAICS: IMAGINEASIAN / Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra / Review

MUSICAL MOSAICS: IMAGINEASIAN

Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (10 August 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 August 2025 with the title "Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra's concert celebrates Asean's musical heritage".

There was a definite ASEAN flavour to the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra’s (ACSO) latest concert jointly conducted by Dedric Wong and Adrian Chiang. Attended by President and Mrs Tharman Shanmugaratnam, there were no less than four medleys of local and regional songs, but thankfully there was hardly any overlap with each composer having distinct voices.

Kelly Tang’s Symphonic Suite on a Set of Local Tunes, which opened the show, highlighted Dick Lee’s songs including Home and Bunga Sayang. Syafiqah ‘Adha Sallehin’s Singapura Medley was strong on Malay songs, beginning with Di Tanjong Katong, while Zechariah Goh’s Singaporean Folk Medley looked at local Eurasian culture, closing with Jinkly Nona.

Given the recent border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, a musical truce was declared with concertante works from both nations performed one after another. Thai composer Jinnawat Mansap’s Naka, celebrating the mythological serpent (or naga as we know it) featured Prapanpong Maneewong on the khaen, a mouth organ fashioned with bamboo pipes. Its sheng-like sonority dominated this work which was filled with striding martial strains.

By contrast Cambodian composer Him Sophy’s The Way To Angkor opened plaintively with Tola Say bowing the tro sao, a Khmer spike fiddle with a timbre not unlike the zhonghu. His duet with cellist Olivia Chuang was short but touching, and despite oncoming dissonance from the orchestra, the traditional instrument was a voice not to be silenced.

Wang Chenwei’s Tekka Theka was a tribute to the Kandang Kerbau vicinity of Little India with its bustling market place. Ghanavenothan Retnam’s hauntingly beautiful bansuri (Indian flute) was the protagonist in a work which had Indian, Malay and Chinese influences. In support were Madhavan Kalaichelvan (veena), Muhammad Ansari Abdul Razak (rebana) and Soh Swee Kiat (sheng) representing three musical cultures.

Our closest neighbour across the Causeway was represented by Loh Ui Li in her Malaysian Folk Song Medley, which had Rais Iqbal resplendent on the serunai (Malay reed instrument) with its plangent and piercing tone not unlike a suona. Among the songs were Rasa Sayang and Chan Mali Chan, and before one cries foul, it should be remembered that just a little more than sixty years ago, Malaysia and Singapore were once the same nation.

Food is a subject where many a debate arises, but Eric Watson chose a Broadway idiom to frame his Gourmet Paradise, a three-movement dawn-to-dusk primer of local meals. Vocalist Juni Goh from vocal band MICappella led a rap for Nanyang Breakfast – Kopi, eggs and kaya toast / Nanyang breakfast is so shiok – before extolling the virtues of Roti Prata and Hainanese Chicken Rice.

Closing the colourful concert was the world premiere of Germaine Goh’s When Rivers Remember, uniting the four soloists from four ASEAN nations. Here was the baroque concerto grosso updated to include water-related songs Dayong Sampan, Loy Krathong, Ulek Mayang and Sarika Keo Euy, with visuals representing the Singapore, Chao Phraya, Malacca and Mekong Rivers.

Photo: Nathaniel Lim

If all governments can sort their problems as harmoniously as these instrumentalists and ACSO, lasting peace is here to stay.

Photo: Nathaniel Lim

SINGAPORE COMPOSERS FESTIVAL: FINAL CONCERT / VENU NADAM: A SYMPHONIC CONFLUENCE / Composers Society of Singapore / Vamshika Quintet

 

SINGAPORE COMPOSERS FESTIVAL: 

FINAL CONCERT 

Peranakan Museum 

Saturday (23 March 2024)

VENU NADAM: 

A SYMPHONIC CONFLUENCE 

Vamshika Quintet & Friends 

Black Box, Drama Centre 

Saturday (23 March 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 March 2024 with the title "Contemporary dissonance at Singapore Composers Festival, Vamshika Quintet's aural feast".  

The Singapore Composers Festival was a one-day event organised by the Composers Society of Singapore (CSS) which included two talks and and two concerts. Its closing concert was a showcase by six young composers from CSS and its cross-Causeway counterpart, the Malaysian Composers Collective (MCC). 

Interesting and thought-provoking may describe the works performed by the aptly-named Weird Aftertaste, a contemporary music ensemble comprising keyboardists Bertram Wee and Lynette Yeo, saxophonist Michellina Chan, violinist Christoven Tan and cellist Chee Jun Sian. 

Music from the guests came first, opening with Sebastian Ooi’s Mujo for alto saxophone, which explored myriad capabilities of the instrument. Lyrical lines were interjected with assorted snorts and gasps, and clicks emanating from depressed keys, a representation of the state of impermanence suggested in its title in Japanese. 

Ainolnaim Azizol’s Miroirs of Malay Rebab: Menghadap Rebab highlighted the modern cello’s kinship with the Malay spiked fiddle, with accompanying electronics sampling recorded sounds of techniques employed including pizzicatos, slides and the knocking of wood. 

Spare a thought for those sitting near the speakers as Jellal Koay’s oMGgggG hOW dAR3 yoOouUwUu!!!!!1! for keyboard four hands blasted without apology the musical equivalent of Greta Thunberg-inspired expletives. Listen beyond the ear-shattering white noise, one may find a modicum of rhythm and demented organ-like chorales. 

From the Singaporean composers, Avik Chari’s Cities I for saxophone, cello and electronics provided the most repeatable listening, its funky jazz-like themes and rhythms suggesting the chic of urban sophisticates. 14-year-old composing prodigy Nathanael Koh’s Of Eternal Time for synthesisers, violin and cello relived the reassuring chords of Frenchman Olivier Messiaen and a quest for inner peace. 

Closing the hour-long concert was Ding Jian Han’s P. p. P. p., a play of contrasting sound textures and rhythms featuring all five players. With motivic fragments, pulsed ostinatos, alternating long-held and staccatos notes coming into the mix, the pointillistic score brought the festival to a resounding conclusion. To the creators, one can only heed, “Carry on composing!” 

There are few things in this world more haunting or sensuous as the tones of the bansuri or Indian bamboo flute. Bring together five bansuri exponents, Niranjan Pandian, Raghavendran Rajasekaran, Logindran, Vishnu Veluri and Bian Tong who formed the Vamshika Quintet in 2022, an aural feast is the result. 

Directed by bansuri veteran Ghanavenothan Retnam, the ensemble does not function like a typical Western ensemble with polyphony as a main goal. Instead, each player takes turns as his own virtuoso with others providing heterophonic backing and harmonies in fixed intervals. In addition, the quintet was accompanied by Lazar T. Sebastine (Carnatic violin) and percussion, Jayagowtham Annadurai (mridangam) and Lalit Kumar Ganesh (tabla). 

The music was based on ragas, the quintessential framework and basis for Indian composition and improvisation. Titles like Pandian’s Divine Echoes and Ballad of Quintessence, Muthuswami Dikshithar’s Vathapi Ganapathim, and visiting composer-lecturer Vidwan Amith Nadig’s Leaf merely served as vehicles for musical magic – a free-flowing and almost improvisatory outpouring of expressions and emotions - to emerge. 

In Nadig’s Ragam Thanam Pallavi, the concert’s centrepiece and longest work, guest-performer Samuel Phua’s mellow saxophone blended seamlessly into the ensemble. The music’s complex and ever-changing meters were comfortably negotiated, and there was even a segment of communal beating out of rhythms with no winds being heard. 

Nadig’s Nuances saw Jonathan Tan’s dizi (Chinese bamboo flute) join the love-in. Far from being an interloper, his higher pitched and shriller timbre were absorbed as an integral part of the flute family. Adjectives like mesmerising, hypnotising and other-worldly came to mind all through the concert’s 90-odd minutes, performed without intermission. 

In Lalgudi Jayaraman’s classic Mohanakalyani Thillana, the pristine tone of Rachel Ho’s Western flute in perfect conversation with any of the bansuris became true objects of beauty. One might add a glimpse of paradise itself.

Visiting bansuri specialist Vidwan Amith Nadig
addressing the audience and performers.