VENU NADAM: A FESTIVE TRAIL / Vamshika Quintet / Review

 

VENU NADAM: A FESTIVE TRAIL

Vamshika Quintet

The Arts House Chamber

Sunday (18 January 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 January 2026 with the title "A celebration of Indian flutes".

Vamshika Quintet is an ensemble, part of the 10-year-old Brahmastra Arts House, that celebrates the culture and sounds of Indian bamboo flutes, the bansuri and venu. Established by Niranjan Pandian, the quintet – also comprising Logindran Govindarasu, Vishnu Veluri, Sabapathy Tirupathi Ramana and Ravindra Kumar – presented a 100-minute concert with seven works showcasing the breadth and depth of these instruments.

There are few sounds as haunting or beautiful as the Indian flute, which has a mellowness in timbre that eludes its Western and Chinese counterparts. When heard as a group of instruments with varying registers, the pleasure is multiplied manifold. To keep the ensemble, backed by violinist Sreeranjani Muthu Subramanian and drummers Lalit Kumar Ganesh (tabla) and Jayagowtham Annadurai (mridangam), in time and rhythm, the works were conducted by the quintet’s visiting mentor from India Vidwan Amith Nadig and Carnatic music veteran Lazar Sebastine.

The evening opened with Sri Muthuswamy Dikshithar’s Vathapi Ganapathim, an invocation to Lord Ganesh often heard as a prelude to temple festivals and ceremonies. Its lively rhythms were captured in solos and in various groupings.

When all five flautists play together, a choral effect is created, as heard in Vidwan’s Dream Garden. While polyphony was not sustained for long, it was the dominant heterophony that created an audible illusion of multiple sonic layers. Modern pop influences were also included in the arrangement to spice up the proceedings.

An interactive element of the concert got the audience to know the players a little better, who used their flutes to answer simple questions like “do you have a favourite flute?” or “what do you think of pineapples on pizzas?” Higher pitched and more florid responses indicated affirmation while lower pitched and falling tones meant “duh”.

SEA Medley sounded distinctly non-Indian because Gu Wei’s arrangement included melodies from Myanmar, Thailand and Singapore. The last was also the most recognisable, not Dick Lee’s Home but Dayong Sampan, celebrated by Leong Yoon Pin and the Chinese song Tian Mi Mi.

Vidwan’s Ragam Tanam Pallavi was the longest work on the programme, first sounding long-breathed and meditative as it evoked wind on the mountains, and later many spots involving improvisation. Carnatic violinist Sreeranjani got the lion’s share, and was justly applauded. The increasingly irregular meters were met with players clapping out rhythms as the music veered to near-intoxication.

After a short break, Pandit Ashwin Sreenivasan’s Panch Prayag resumed the choir-like harmonies from the flutes before breaking out into a raucous dance. In a similar vein, Niranjan’s fast and rhythmic Feathers of Grace evoked the regal strut of a peacock, with hundreds of flickering eyes following suit. Finally, Vidwan’s Thillana In Raga Pantuvarali saw the violin echoing the lowest pitched flute in dialogue, as the music wound its way to a celebratory close.

With such committed advocacy from Vamshika, the complexion of Indian flute playing in Singapore would never be the same again.

Mentor Vidwan Amith Nadig
receives his applause.

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

ASCO IS 5! / Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra / Review

ACSO IS 5!

Asian Cultural 

Symphony Orchestra

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (30 August 2022)

 

The Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra (ACSO), founded in 2016, occupies an important niche in Singapore’s music scene by performing works that merge Asian cultures and sensibilities with the western symphony orchestra. By championing music by Singaporean and Asian composers, it has complemented the good work fostered by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and its Nanyang music projects. It also filled the gaping lacuna left by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, which had earlier in this century marketed itself as a “destination orchestra by bringing together musical cultures from the East and West”, but quietly dropped that tagline somewhere along the way.

 

ACSO is led by a team of two conductors, Dedric Wong Deli, well-known as a conductor of the Chinese instrumental chamber group Ding Yi Music Company, and Adrian Chiang, General Manager of re:Sound Collective and conductor of numerous ensembles thus representing the western classical music caucus. They share conducting duties in its concerts, taking turns in leading different works with the programme.

 

Wong opened the evening with Confluence by Wang Chen Wei (present Composer-in-Residence of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra), a rousing overture-like work that typified the Nanyang sound. Using the pelog scale in its lilting main theme, there is a recognisable Indo-Malayan character to the music, which also benefitted from the use of liberal portamenti and sheer colour of symphonic instruments. To seal this colourful marriage between cultures, a fugue was also thrown into the fray, livening the proceedings besides offering further proof of the composer’s academic credentials.  

 

Following this were four concertante works, more than amply demonstrating the wealth of solo instrumental talent on our shores. The first was Germaine Goh’s Kaleidoscope, a single-movement fantasy for clarinet and orchestra with Ralph Emmanuel Lim as exuberant soloist. Opening with a solo accompanied by harp ostinatos, the music opened dreamily and then came to life with a series of animated dance-like rhythms. Influences from Debussy may be discerned, as well as Copland and Bernstein in the more jazzy bits, but she does not imitate them. Much is attractive and enjoyable in this work, where the demi-mondaine world of smokey speakeasies and Hollywood glamour is not just hinted at but relived.    

 

Chinese composer Wang Dan Hong is a well-known name in Chinese orchestra circles and her guzheng concerto As Thus is as glitzy as they come. Its slow introduction with gentle string accompaniment established soloist Yvonne Tay, in an advanced antenatal state, as a sensitive protagonist. However the amplication of her guzheng was garishly overdone, with distorted sound detracting from her brilliant narrative. As with Wang’s rhapsodic and quasi-cinematic scores, the pacing hastened to an exciting climax, and a faux ending which had the audience applauding prematurely. A true apotheosis and close came later, and the payoff was no less vociferous.

 

Singapore-based Briton Eric Watson’s Dialogue for tabla and orchestra is a well-travelled work commissioned by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Its iteration with western instruments was no less trenchant, held together by the virtuosic drumming of Govin Tan, young tabla virtuoso who comes from a Hindu Chinese family. If one wondered what mileage could be had with a pair of drums which essentially plays single notes, one is prepared to be surprised. For the first half, the tabla provided accompaniment to a series of varied themes from the orchestra (including one resembling a motif from Stravinsky’s Firebird), then it takes a life of its own – a good four minutes or so of solo improvisation. As cadenzas go, this was simply breathtaking.

Edmund Song is better known as the double bassist of Red Dot Baroque and re:Sound. This evening, he took on duo-mantle of composer and conductor, leading the World Premiere of his Triple Concertino entitled Till The End Of Time. A work that employed a mix of Asian scales, the music emanated a variety of aromatic incenses. The soloists Niranjan Pandian (bansuri, North Indian bamboo flute), Jacky Ng (suona) and Azrin Abdullah (oud, Middle Eastern lute) had their moments in the spotlight, and how precious these were. The bansuri was positively haunting, the suona took on cor anglais tones resembling Rodrigo’s Aranjuez, while the oud could have had more air time. Some degree of counterpoint with all three together should have been the end-result but the opportunity was not taken, with heterophony prevailing instead.

 

It would still have been a totally satisfying experience had the concert ended there, but ACSO possessed several encores up its collective sleeve. Surprise celebrity cameos took the form of busker-of-the-season Jeff Ng in a medley of JJ Lin songs, while legendary songstress and 2021 Cultural Medallion recipient Rahimah Rahim irrepressibly strutted her stuff with two Malay songs and Bob Gaudio’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons). That was mere icing on a wonderfully baked cake, and long may the Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra thrive, and entertain.

 

All the soloists joined in the finale
Can't Take My Eyes Off You.