THE MUSIC, OUR WORKS / Review

THE MUSIC, OUR WORKS

The Arts House Living Room

Thursday (24 May 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 26 May 2012 with the title "Young composers show promise". 

The realm where the young composers of Singapore today inhabit looks like a vibrant and thought-provoking environment to be part of. This chamber concert showcased the diverse talents of five such individuals, all alumni of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, who are unafraid to bare their souls and express their innermost secrets.

Chinese music with a Singaporean vibe:
Ernest Thio's Poise.

The stereotype of the unapologetic Schoenbergian or Boulez-wannabe seems to be in the minority these days, with more composers re-embracing tonality and its aural comforts. Ernest Thio, whose music opened the closed the concert, has a fine ear for harmony through exotic timbres. In I Felt a Funeral in My Brain, based on Emily Dickinson poems, he skilfully blended two voices with lush piano chords in a work that saw death as a passage of solace rather than anguish.

Ernest Thio's Nian employed
an unusual quartet of Samuel King (piano),
the composer (ukulele), Dominica Chua (erhu)
and Rozie Hoong (zhonghu).

In the brief Poise, an erhu and zhonghu played out an elegy as counterpoint to the piano’s bare theme. Most memorable was Thio’s Nian for huqins, piano and ukulele, a memory of his Hokkien-speaking grandmother who lived in a Buddhist temple which used a chant as its subject. Thio’s part on the Hawaiian guitar simulated that of a strummed Chinese instrument. This is a reminiscence of Chinese music, viewed through Singaporean lenses.

The ensemble for Luo Enning's My One True Love:
the composer (piano), Yap Pheck Chuan (violin),
Doreen Yeo (clarinet) and Bernard Yong (glockenspiel).

Luo Enning’s My One True Love was even more unusual, a 21^st century work that completely avoided dissonances and even minor chords. Scored for violin, clarinet, glockenspiel and piano, its vision of eros resembled the quasi-jazzy and deliberately simplistic dance music of Shostakovich, but minus the irony and guile.

Lu Heng's Blues of the Day was played
by the composer (piano), Christoven Tan (viola),
Clarence Chung (electric guitar)
and Shaun Soh (drums).

In Lu Heng’s Blues of the Day, a spirit of improvisation came to the fore. The electric guitar and drum-set made it sound more like a rock band rather than jazz combo. Rhythmic from start to end, one would not have been too surprised had the riffs of Lalo Schifrin’s Mission Impossible Theme burst out with guns blazing.

And then there were two solo works that showed that atonality was not completely dead. Alicia De Silva’s 12-minute-long Cadenza (from Suite for Viola), played by Christoven Tan, was almost a suite in itself as it explored a myriad of moods and responses, from its ruminative beginning to Schnittke-like pages of seething violence.

Christoven Tan (Viola) and Gabriel Lee (Violin)

Similarly, Bernard Lee Kah Hong’s And it Happens to Drop from Beneath, the work that won the 2011 National Violin Competition composition award, truly tested violinist Gabriel Lee’s mettle. Operating at a narrower range of dynamics, its understated virtuosity nevertheless probed varying degrees of psychological disquiet.     

This 70-minute snapshot of our nation’s varied compositional landscape was both an invigorating and encouraging signpost of how and where our music is heading to.

The composers' circle (from L to R):
Ernest Thio, Lu Heng, Alicia De Silva,
Donna Koh (Moderator), Bernard Lee Kah Hong
and Luo Enning.

LIVING WITH... Young Composers / Review

LIVING WITH… YOUNG COMPOSERS
Living Room @ The Arts House 

Monday (2 May 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 May 2011 with the title "Young composers were hit and miss".

Fact: there are more composers in Singapore now than any other time in history. Who are they and what do they compose? The Arts House’s “Living With…” series provided some of the clues.

The setting was informal, and like poetry reading sessions, a means of expressing themselves and eliciting some reaction from an audience. But first, tribute was paid when one of the young composers, Jun Zubillaga-Pow performed on piano the Prelude Orientale by late doyen of Singaporean composers Leong Yoon Pin.

Its pentatonic melody and eclectic quasi-American idiom (Ives and Copland come to mind) had discernible form, something which his younger colleagues could take home and learn. Then Bernard Lee Kah Hong’s Seeing Through the Unbondable Links of Hours shot the first atonal salvoes.

About people who come together for a while and then go on their own ways, four musicians – a pianist, percussionist, violinist and oboist – did just that. There were aleatorical (chance) elements and scored sections, but given the diffuse and seemingly random nature of the music, one was hard pressed to guess which was which, and whether the artists were having their listeners on.

Equally unintelligible was Zubillaga-Pow’s A Situational Conversation Happening During the Global Economic Crisis. Quite a mouthful, but the sung work with ruan (plucked Chinese instrument) accompaniment centred on a Bangladeshi immigrant worker and his “boss” with whom he also has a physical relationship. Amid the background hum of piling noises, the singer’s voice traversed too narrow a range, was indeterminate in pitch and undecipherable in content.

Alicia de Silva’s two Songs Of Night were settings of Amy Lowell and Walt Whitman, both good literary sources. Her deft use of clarinet and piano helped provide atmospheric colour for Evelyn Ang’s vocals, which had emotional heft and range – from whisper to yelp - to register a blip on consciousness. Why two of the performers painted their faces to resemble Goths or groupies at a KISS revival remained a mystery.

Finally Luo Enning’s Light And Day was a three-movement flute sonata with thematic interest which could be further developed. The finale saw Clement Lim blow his flute into the innards of Teo Li-Chin’s piano, creating an ethereal effect with harmonics for a placid close. A post-concert forum later provided lively discourse and food for thought. Hit or miss, the young composers are encouraged to continue experimenting and find their own individual voices.