SINGAPORE CHINESE ORCHESTRA 30TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER & CONCERT / Some Photographic Memories

On 6 September 2026, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) held its 30th anniversary dinner and concert at the Grand Ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore. It was a grand and glitzy affair befitting this historical landmark. The SCO was formed in 1996, with humble origins as the People's Association Chinese Orchestra. Today, it is acknowledged as one of the world's leading ensembles of Chinese traditional instruments.

The guest-of-honour was its founding patron Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong was also in attendance. It was a rare occasion outside of National Day Parades and People's Action Party events that two living Singapore former prime ministers were present to attend. SCO has been fortunate to receive their unwavering support over the decades.

Members of SCO perform to herald
the entrance of the honoured guests.

All hail to the chief

The SCO was also at full-strength to perform a concert led by its principal conductor Quek Ling Kiong. The full programme can be found below:

SCO Chairman Ng Siew Quan
addresses the audience and salutes the musicians.

Here are photos of the seven-course Chinese dinner that was served, interspersed by the musical performances. 

SCO performs Wang Chenwei's
Lion City Rhapsody, while the composer
films soloists playing on his rare huqins.

The SCO 30th birthday cake
in the shape of a dagu (big drum).

The main courses, you only get to eat one.

SM Lee is presented the anniversary gift,
a gong, which he strikes with gusto.

Everyone sings Happy Birthday to SCO
and the cake is cut by SM Lee.

Take It Step By Step relives some of
SCO's musical triumphs,
including its 2019 Berlin debut.

There's something Freudian about these
big, juicy and succulent kiwi mochis.
Befitting the final work Hua Hao Yue Yuan
(Full Moon Blossoms).

SCO30 OPENING GALA / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

SCO30 OPENING GALA

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (18 July 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 July 2026 with the title "Singapore Chinese Orchestra 30th anniversary gala celebrates early Nanyang music".

The programme of Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s 30th anniversary opening gala concert, led by principal conductor Quek Ling Kiong, was kept secret from all who attended up to the moment it began. The works had been selected based on audience feedback, a sample of what they wanted to hear most.

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Surprising was the fact that most of the music was less than totally familiar or populist. Instead it was representative of repertoire SCO performed during its early years when led by conductors like Hu Bingxu and Xia Feiyun. The Overture from Shang Yi’s The Dagger Society Suite, arranged by Sim Boon Yew, opened the show. Resplendent suonas backed by percussion fronted this celebratory number from the 1989 folk-dance opera.

Ma Shenglong and Gu Guanren’s Fisherman’s Song of the Eastern Seas was a symphonic poem relating the toils, trials and tribulations of fisher-folk. Its conjoint sections depicted dawn with an evocative dizi solo, the outward journey with lyrical songlines, a proverbial storm to be weathered, before the emphatic triumph of a bountiful harvest.

Academy Award winner Tan Dun’s Yellow Earth followed with similarly programmatic content. The highly cinematic music opened dramatically with Raining From The Sky, lots of percussion, a plangent suona solo and vocalisations from the musicians. Gate Crashing the Bridal Chamber was suitably raucous, while Desiring Intimacy saw dizis and erhus expressing sensuousness in the highest registers. Coming back down to earth was Stone-Slab Waist Drum, with martial and ceremonial music dominated by percussion again.

Peng Xiuwen’s The Sixth Month: A Night in Pasir Ris from Twelve Months Suite opened the second half, in a scene of nocturnal tranquility interrupted by Malay and Indian dance rhythms, with Chan Mali Chan being alluded to. Whoever thought sleepy Pasir Ris during the 1980s to be this festive in an early example of Nanyang music?

Photo: Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Lo Leung Fai’s Winter opened with snowy flurries represented by string prestidigitation, a perpetual motion that also depicted gently falling snowflakes. A big tune first heard on dizi was worked to a plethoric climax before a resumption of virtuoso fiddling for a brilliantly festive finish.

Former SCO composer-in-residence and Cultural Medallion recipient Law Wai Lun’s Admiral of the Seven Seas was a prime example of Nanyang music at its finest, with two movements closing the concert on buoyant spirits. The Voyage of explorer Zheng He (Cheng Ho) deftly depicted adventure on the high seas, with broad melodies ornamented by cries of seagulls. The Vow, recounting the marriage between a Malay sultan and Chinese a princess, good reason to bring out all the gamelan scales, a chorus of suonas and drumming at full pelt.

Attended by Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, on whose watch SCO turned professional from its humble beginnings as the People’s Association Chinese Orchestra, the playing was full-blooded and celebratory. The obligatory encore of Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Full Moon Blossoms) by Huang Yi Jun merely capped off the importance and significance of SCO’s three illustrious decades as “the people’s orchestra”.

TITAN SCULPTORS / Singapore Chinese Orchestra / Review

 

TITAN SCULPTORS

Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Singapore Conference Hall

Saturday (6 June 2026)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 June 2026 with the title "SCO pays tribute to artists in dulcet blend of art and music". 

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s closing gala concert conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, was a tribute to four of the nation’s sculptors who were Cultural Medallion recipients, a harmonious union of visual art and music. Opening with Liu Changyuan’s Vibrant Life from Light (his Fifth Symphony), this kinetically charged toccata dominated by percussion was accompanied by many projected images of Singapore’s outdoor sculptures dotting the urban landscape.

In SCO composer-in-residence Wang Chenwei’s Samsui Women, repeated notes of a Cantonese tune heard on plucked strings symbolised the sweat and toil of the lady labourers who literally built Singapore. Lin Gao’s zhonghu and concertmaster Li Baoshun’s gaohu added to the music’s poignancy before Ping Hu Qiu Yue (Autumn Moon On Calm Lake) and Rasa Sayang were heard, a spiritual meeting of their Chinese homeland and Nanyang.

In Wang’s Winds of Affinity, Lee Jun Cheng and Ng Wei Xuan on dizis were a pair of well-balanced soloists. Playing on flutes of different registers were the aural reference to the late Ng Eng Teng’s iconic Mother and Child sculpture which stands in front of National Gallery. The tight bonds between both unions can never be severed.

For Phang Kok Jun’s Symphonic Floras, the gentle sound of tuned percussion and plucked strings suggested a leisurely walk through a tropical rainforest. The weathering of monsoons depicted by increasingly vigorous orchestral rhythms saw how the kernals of Han Sai Por’s Seeds eventually germinate into full-grown trees.

The late Chng Seok Tin lost her eyesight after complications from a fall in 1988, and rhetorical questions such as "Why Me?" and "Where is Love?" were posed in Luo Maishuo’s Compassion. The music’s more modern idiom reflected the darker and contemplative complexion of Chng’s works, with Xu Zhong’s poignant cello solo central to the ethos that “love and faith endure, even when time cannot be turned back”.

New York-based Koh Cheng Jin’s First Generation received its world premiere, the only work that exactly matched the title of the sculpture it was inspired by. The artwork in question is Chong Fah Cheong’s much-beloved tableaux of five boys frolicking on the banks of Singapore River. Strings dominated its opening, a lively work which quoted two popular melodies – Singapura and Ach, Du Lieber Augustin, better known here as The More We Are Together.

Both the sculpture, which stands by Cavenagh Bridge and Fullerton Hotel, and the music capture the spirit of a more innocent age now lost to time.

The concluding work, four movements from Tan Dun’s Crouching Tiger Concerto, adapted from the score of Academy Award winning Ang Lee movie, seemed almost superfluous. This, however provided an opportunity to showcase the virtuosity of associate principal gaohu Zhou Ruoyu on two huqins.

The movie’s main title finally accompanied images of Singapore’s 139 Cultural Medallion recipients over the decades, including two SCO conductors and three composers-in-residence, a tribute to artists who have indelibly enriched Singapore’s cultural life.