MEMOIRS IN MUSIC / Nanyang Collective / Review

 

MEMOIRS IN MUSIC

Nanyang Collective

Esplanade Recital Studio

Tuesday (9 December 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 December 2025 with the title "Musical narrative of Singapore history deserves encore".

The SG60 commemoration continued with Memoirs In Music, a multi-disciplinary hour-long concert presentation by Nanyang Collective conducted by Dedric Wong. Its timing, coinciding with the Albatross File public exhibition at the National Library Board, seemed almost uncanny but it tapped on our nation’s sense of becoming by facing up to Singapore’s history as a modern city-state.

Photo: Aaron Ang

The story and script by Jasmin Wong thankfully avoided jingoism and self-congratulation, instead took on a wistfulness that people of a certain age tend to harbour while looking at the past. Actor Clement Yeo played the part of storyteller by being Everyman, with multiple roles including children and adults relating their accounts in both English and a smattering of Mandarin.

In these assorted vignettes, not necessarily presented in a chronological order, one may relate to by suggesting, “Hey, that’s me!” while others may appear as vague and tenuous memories.

Photo: Aaron Ang

The concert opened with musicians placed within the audience and behind, playing isolated tunes and melodies before gathering onstage to form the ensemble proper. This was representative of diverse peoples who hailed from different lands coming together in composer Gu Wei’s Hope / Divergence, the opening work.

Photo: Aaron Ang

One might have expected jarring dissonances when instruments from the West (violin, cello, clarinet and euphonium) collide headlong with Chinese (pipa and sheng), Indian (veena), Indonesian (gamelan and suling) and those that cross cultures (accordion and percussion).

Photo: Aaron Ang

But no, the music remained remarkably harmonious for most part including Gu’s Fracture / Ascent, representing separation from Malaysia. If truth be told, Singapore’s independence was not exactly bloodless, with dozens paying with their lives in 1964 race riots, leading to the eventual split.

Symbolism was strong in the running tableaux, especially in Yeo’s obsessive activity in building, planting, watering and cultivating. Soil and sand littered centrestage, plants were uprooted and re-potted, Lego bricks were assembled into various structures, and assorted toys were played with.

One is soon guided into the notion that ever-busy Everyman was encapsulated in a singular person, the founding prime minister. To his credit, he never had to proclaim, “I am Lee Kuan Yew!”

Young Artist Award recipient Chen Zhangyi’s segment From Scratch related events including the 1961 Bukit Ho Swee fire (dramatic shouting), the 2004 Nicoll Highway MRT collapse (Lego pieces falling apart), and the 1981 completion of Changi Airport (toy planes taking off). Memories are made of these, and with Cultural Medallion recipient Eric Watson’s Passing The Baton and Legacy And Beyond / After The Rain, one is transported to present times.

Photo: Aaron Ang

It did not matter if one could not distinguish when each work ended and the next began, as the musical narrative accompanying the acting was seamless. The multiple instrumental parts were helmed by no less than virtuosos, and one could easily enjoy their work even if one was no longer following the story. Memoirs In Music deserves to be replayed, at least to a bigger audience that gathered on this lazy Tuesday evening.

Photo: Aaron Ang

RIVER OF LIFE / NP Collective / Review

 

RIVER OF LIFE: 

AN INTERCULTURAL ODYSSEY 

NP Collective 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Thursday (12 September 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 September 2024 with the title" NP Collective finds unity in diversity".

Rivers are the bringers of life and civilisation, with the lands and nations of the Asian continent being chief beneficiaries of their perpetual sustenance. This was the basis of the hour-long concert by NP Collective, an ensemble under the umbrella of Brahmastra Arts House. 

Photo: Brahmastra Arts House

Its nine musicians performing a host of different instruments, conducted by Huang Ming Xiang, come from diverse musical backgrounds. Crossover and fusion might have been convenient labels for the works performed, but reality was more nuanced than that expedient pigeon-holing of musical genres. 

By placing guest sarangi player Sarfaraaz Khan as main soloist, the obvious start point was that of South Asian music. The haunting tone he coaxed from the vertically-held bowed three-stringed instrument was memorable, with a range and timbre wavering somewhere between Western violin and viola. Coloured with distinct vocal qualities, it is once heard, never forgotten. 

Further melodic interest came from creative director Niranjan Pandian on bansuri (Indian bamboo flute, above) and Bryan de Rozario on tenor saxophone, backed by cello, electronic bass and keyboard, and percussion (mridangam, traditional and modern drums, small cymbals, singing bowls and rainsticks). The possibilities seemed endless, however the five works on show were constrained by the need to utilise all the instruments such that they came across as somewhat interchangeable. 

Photo: Brahmastra Arts House

Eric Watson’s Between Two Rivers opened the show, followed by John Sharpley’s River of Light. Both composers have very different compositional idioms and styles, but it was nigh impossible to tell them apart here. Both had provided in their scores forms and themes for the musicians to work with, but much latitude was left for improvisation and ornamentation. 

Thus as each work progressed, Indian music with its sine qua non ruminative qualities (as in most ragas) soon morphed into jazzy inventions, with infectious beats provided by the battery of percussion. This was no bad thing as every work was kept light and lively, and ultimately enjoyable. 

Sharpley’s work also had the added element of movement with percussionist NJ Pravin leaving his perch to pursue drumming as an animated dance. Had this been scripted or was it all spontaneous? Jazz exponent Chok Kerong’s Rapids juxtaposed sarangi with sax - an alluring combo - and later bansuri with drums, providing an edgy feel throughout. 

Avik Chari’s Zanskar Milan dwelled on the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers in the Himalayas, its leisurely pace and meditative nature enhanced with most of the illuminations turned off. Gu Wei’s To The Southern Seas, which closed the concert, expressed hopes and aspirations provided by the Yangtze River but had no distinctive Chinese themes involved. 

That would have been just too cliched, but it was the unison playing (heterophony, commonly encountered in Chinese music) of all involved which impressed most. Diversity thus became unity in this instance, as well as the concert on a whole, and was none the worse for it.

Photo: Brahmastra Arts House