FRENCH CINEMATIC ICONS: BOLLING AND BEYOND / Roberto Alvarez & Friends / Review

 

FRENCH CINEMATIC ICONS: 

BOLLING AND BEYOND 

Roberto Alvarez & Friends 

Alliance Francaise 

Sunday (10 November 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 November 2024 with the title "Music from movies showcases magical power of sound".

Music in movies have the capacity to touch and move, and very often the melodies are better remembered than the films themselves. As a prelude to the French Film Festival, Singapore Symphony Orchestra flautist Roberto Alvarez and his friends crafted a very attractive programme as a reminder of the magical power of sound. 

Does anybody remember the star-studded California Suite, for which the late Maggie Smith won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress? Arguably more memorable was French jazz composer and pianist Claude Bolling’s score, with its highly syncopated and catchy Main Title, with pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina obliged to jump through many hoops accompanying Alvarez’s silvery lines. 

Together with bassist Julian Li and percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam, this cosmopolitan quartet followed up with movements from Bolling’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Trio, his most often-heard work. The formally-trained Bolling was so adept in merging jazz and classical idioms that his fusion pieces are equally beloved by artists across the stylistic divide. 

Sentimentale is already an established classic, the flute’s legato passages well contrasted with the movement’s groovily rhythmic central section. The jig-like bantering of Fugace was in the form of a fugue, the tricky counterpoint of which J.S.Bach would have been proud. The easy swing of Irlandaise (Irish) would soon give way to frenetic pulse of Veloce, which closed the concert’s first half with stunning aplomb. 

While this music sounds easy to the ear, it is very difficult to pull off convincingly. The quartet was not just on top of their game, but also having great fun. 

The oldest piece on show was Camille Saint-Saens’s shimmering Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals, which made an appearance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. 

Far more recent was the music of Yann Tiersen, whose La valse d’Amelie and Comptine dun autre ete, l’apres-midi in The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain had little to do with Ravel or Debussy, but more the drolleries of Erik Satie married with minimalism. 

Roberto played the piccolo in this piece.

From Ludovic Bource, George Valentin and Waltz for Peppy from The Artist had ragtime and dancehall influences, sounding as elegant and insouciant as French music could possibly be. Ramu tapping on wood blocks was a sight to behold. The ubiquitous Michel Legrand had to feature sometime, his bittersweet minor key melodies of Windmills of Your Mind (The Thomas Crown Affair) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg being greeted with knowing approval. 

Photo: Chris P. Lim

A suite of movie melodies were thus paraded, from Alexandre Desplat’s Elisa’s Theme from The Shape of Water (a waltz of touching simplicity), Francis Lai’s A Man and A Woman (a swinger known only to people of a certain vintage) to Carlos D’Alessio’s End Credits to Delicatessen (appropriately cheerful for a black humour horror pic about cannibalism). 

Photo: Chris P. Lim

It was, however, back to Bolling that the fab four returned for an encore, the Love Theme from California Suite. That was simply charming.

Kseniia's daughter Aurelia joins
the quartet on stage for the final bows.

PICNIC SUITE / ROBERTO ALVAREZ, KEVIN LOH & FRIENDS / Review

PICNIC SUITE

ROBERTO ALVAREZ, Flute

KEVIN LOH, Guitar et al

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (16 April 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 18 April 2017 with the title "Inspirational folk music". 

Spanish flautist Roberto Alvarez has introduced more new music to audiences than anyone else, including world and local premieres of works by Spanish, Singaporean and New Zealand composers. His latest concert, a collaboration with HSBC Youth Excellence Award recipient guitarist Kevin Loh, however shied away from the avant-garde.

All the works had inspirations from folk music and the past, beginning with Maximo Diego Pujol's Suite Buenos Aires with four movements reflecting colours and flavours of different districts in the Argentine capital. Similarities with Piazzolla's Portenos (Seasons) exist, but these were not tangos. Palermo exuded melancholy and nostalgia, while scherzo-like San Telmo had vigourous rhythms tapped out by Alvarez's feet and Loh's hands.

If one thought Alvarez had all the melodies, Loh showed that his nifty guitar provided more than merely accompaniment. With a good share of lyricism and virtuosic flourishes, he closely tracked the flute in the finale Microcentro, a perpetual motion with spiky dissonances for good effect.

Moving northwards, Celso Machado's Musiques Populaires Bresiliennes exhibited a more gentle side, with less angular and jolting rhythms but no less spirit. Three movements included the title Choros (songs of street musicians), a form also employed by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. With hardly a line separating folk music from concert music, only a pedant could resist the allure of Sambossa, a bossa nova number lightly spiced with some harmonic ambiguity, leading to Pe De Moleque, which was a fast and lively samba.

The most traditional work was Hungarian Bela Bartok's Six Romanian Dances, a popular study of ethnomusicology. Better known in its version for violin and piano, the flute and guitar guise was no less piquant, but should the audience have applauded after each minute-long dance?

The duo was joined by pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina, double-bassist Tony Makarome and drummer Ramu Thiruyanam in French jazz pianist-composer Claude Bolling's Picnic Suite, receiving its Singapore premiere. Cast in seven movements, it is a tribute to the baroque suite of disparate dances.

Note the picnic basket on the right.

The 1st movement Rococo opened with a fugue. Guitar followed flute, and when the “orchestra” entered, it opened up a new world of sound – of syncopations, blues and collective letting down of hair. Every phrase had been notated on score, but the playing was so natural and convincing that it sounded fresh and improvised.

Gaylancholic was the title of the 3^rd movement, swinging between the two groups, a friendly contest where formal lines alternated with the seemingly informal. “Gay” must be taken in the traditional sense of the word, which means happy. Alvarez turned to the alto flute for the lyrical Tendre, a beautiful interlude before the busy bantering of Badine, a reference to Bach's Badinerie from his Second Suite (which prominently features the flute).

There were two gratefully received encores, a dance by Pixinguinha and an Asturian lullaby sung to Alvarez by his mother. True to form, the latter was also a World Premiere.     

XPERIENZ: IN C / Asian Contemporary Ensemble / Review

XPERIENZ: IN C

Asian Contemporary Ensemble

University Cultural Centre Dance Studio

Friday (25 March 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 March 2016 with the title "Unusual experience of minimalist music".

The Asian Contemporary Ensemble (ACE) founded by young conductor Wong Kah Chun surprised once again, and in ways which one least expected. Its latest concert coupled Beethoven's evergreen Fifth Symphony with the Singaporean premiere of American minimalist Terry Riley's seminal score In C, in performances which confounded expectations and pre-conceived ideas.

The Dance Studio at UCC is a very small space, which meant that the audience numbering about 100 was seated within the orchestra's ranks. This closeness must have been unnerving for performer and listener, but within a friendly milieu of sharing space and feedback, both parties soon got used to each other.

Conductor Wong, informally attired in polo shirt and denim jeans, introduced the various instrumental groups to the audience and also briefly spoke about Beethoven's orchestration between the movements. Without further fanfare, the Beethoven symphony got underway with the familiar “da-da-da-dum” motif.

Shorn of opulence or bombast, the composer's ideas were laid bare on a plate. One soon discerned how he brought the disparate parts together, in consonance and dissonance. Just four each of first and second violins, three violas, two cellos, two basses and the minimum complement of winds, brass and percussion, meant that the sound was not going to be rich or fulsome.

That was not the idea in the first place, and depending on where one sat, the balance was also certain to be awry. However what the listener got was a truly organic feel of an overplayed masterpiece, and the power of raw emotions set into music. This pair of ears happened to be in the direct trajectory of the trio of trombones that announced themselves wholeheartedly in the finale, and shrill blast of the piccolo.

The Surround Sound effect worked better in Riley's 1964 classic that started an inexorable trend in musical minimalism. Its premise was both simple and primitive, a repeated rhythmic pattern of the C note over which various sequences from combinations of instruments could be grafted onto its unwavering linear structure.

The ensemble was further pared down, now led by percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam on the MalletKat Pro (an electronic xylophone) and drum, with significant contributions from cello and keyboard. Traditional instruments like guzheng, tabla, guitar and bamboo flute were added into the mix, and audience members armed with a single-paged score were encouraged to sing any of the 53 notated fragments during appropriate moments.

The result was a heady and serendipitous melange of sounds, dizzying and strangely hypnotic. Riley's work was in essence the basis of music itself, the very foundation upon which the sounds of African drumming and Javanese gamelan become possible. The Western forms of the canon, passacaglia, theme and variations and the more sophisticated fugue could all be derived from its basic pulse and momentum.

Every incarnation of In C would result in very different outcomes, and ACE'ss version which played for  a good 37 minutes became a thrilling encounter with music at its most rudimentary grassroots. Little wonder that the many children in the audience sat quietly transfixed, clearly overawed by the experience. That is exactly how good music should move people.      

Professor Ho Chee Kong was in the audience, and
took the opportunity for photos with the performers.

DANCE OF AN ANGEL / Katryna Tan 10th Anniversary Harp Recital / Review

 

DANCE OF AN ANGEL

KATRYNA TAN, Harp

Esplanade Recital Studio

Sunday (12 August 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 14 August 2012 with the title "Night of heavenly harmonies".

It seemed only a short while ago when Seremban-born harpist Katryna Tan first burst onto the local musical scene. This concert marks the 10^th anniversary of activities by the architecture student turned indefatigable musician, teacher, entrepreneur and founder of the Singapore Harp Festival, who was awarded the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award in 2005.

Her concert was an 80-minute selection of her favourite music in original form and transcriptions, performed solo and with friends. The evening began with Tan’s own virtuosic arrangements of two Astor Piazzolla tangos, Milonga and Death of the Angel. All through its bittersweet melodies, which portrayed tenderness and yearning, she maintained a steady and unceasing pulse that resonated like the human heartbeat.

Alphonse Hasselmans’s Petite Valse provided a delightful Chopinesque interlude before launching to Franz Liszt’s Liebesträume No.3, replete with its sweeping cadenzas which Tan negotiated with a disarming adroitness. A few misplaced chords towards the end did little to dampen the ardour.

More Latino music was next, with Agustin Lara’s rousing Granada, the subject of Carlos Salzedo’s Fantasy, contrasted with the melancholic Adagio from Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, where both solo and orchestral parts were combined by Tan. It was a credit to her artistry when one neither misses Placido Domingo’s voice or the cor anglais’s plaint in these works.

 

Tan’s friends from her all-girl I-Sis Trio then joined her in duos, first violinist Cindy Yan in Miroslav Skoryk’s Spanish Dance, and later cellist Natasha Liu in Ravel’s Piece in the Form of a Habanera and Debussy’s chanson Beau Soir. Tan’s altogether sensitive accompaniment allowed the melodic lines of her glamourous partners to sing, soar and shine. 

A more unusual collaboration came in the person of percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam, who improvised on cajon box drums (including one he was sitting on), chimes, maracas and a rattle in three of Bernard Andres’s Dances from The Island. In these, Tan played on her newly unveiled blue and chrome electrically amplified harp. Energised, the Mambo, Rumba and Samba movements provided foot-tapping moments which the audience positively revelled in.

All four musicians were united in the final work, Primavera Portena (Spring) from Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The tango rhythm, now vigourous and hip-gyrating instead of just sultry, lent an exuberant end to the evening’s fare. Like Piazzolla who elevated the tango to lofty reaches, Katryna Tan has made the regal harp, the instrument of angels, more accessible to mere mortals.  

  

The I-Sis Trio, Ramu Thiruyanam and colleagues from the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, harpist and guzheng player Ma Xiao Lan and conductor Quek Ling Kiong.

     

SINGAPORE COMPOSE! by The Philharmonic Winds / Review

SINGAPORE COMPOSE!
The Philharmonic Winds

Zechariah Goh Toh Chai, Conductor
Esplanade Concert Hall
Saturday (10 April 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 April 2010.

In what is likely the most significant concert of Singaporean music in recent years, The Philharmonic Winds performed ten works of local composers, including eight World Premieres. The mastermind behind this ambitious undertaking was Zechariah Goh Toh Chai (below), composer-conductor well known for his forays into new music and NAC Young Artist Award recipient, who conducted the concert.

Over 160 minutes, the varied musical tapestry that is Singapore’s growing composing fraternity was unveiled to fascinating effect. If one thought that the genre of wind music was a limiting factor, think again. Other than Kelly Tang’s Decathlon and Wang Chenwei’s Rhythm Of The City, which were more or less straightforward concert band showpieces that skillfully assimilated film music and jazz influences, the others aspired to bring the medium to parts unknown.

The two most modern-sounding works came from youngsters Chen Zhangyi and Bernard Lee Kah Hong. The former employed deft impressionist brushstrokes and colour in the gradual crescendo of Toward Dawn, while the latter revived Second Viennese School atonalism in the fancifully-titled There Is No Date Tree On The Maroon Sky. Both represent a breath of fresh air on our musical landscape.

Then came two very different concertos for tuned and untuned percussion. Conductor Goh’s own Concerto For Vibraphone++ was a subtle union of the Baroque concerto grosso and jazz. Percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam (left) eschewed virtuosity for its own sake, more intent in crafting an optimal atmosphere for this luminous music to shine. An epitome of cool, his encore of Brazilian Abreu’s Manha a Carnaval brought on the loudest cheers.

Not credited in the programme was Dennis Sim, who theatrically mastered the bass drum, Japanese taiko drum and two gongs for Robert Casteels’ Holler Across The Holler (composer left). Here, the conductorless ensemble assiduously responded to the rhetorical questions posed by each instrumental cadenza. The work closed with Seow Shu Feng’s enigmatic piccolo solo played high up in the organ loft.

Coming back to earth were two works flavoured with Southeast Asian themes. Ho Chee Kong’s Perayaan (Celebration!) carried the musk and aromas of a bustling Javanese bazaar, and Jun Wong Kah Chun’s Krakatoa was a well-structured symphonic poem about the 1883 eruption. Both utilised gamelan effects, naturally.

To pour syrup on the fine spices hitherto offered, the band finished with two medleys of popular songs by Xinyao pioneer Liang Wern Fook (left) and musical-meister Dick Lee. One almost forgot they are Singaporean composers too. A sequel to Singapore Compose! is keenly awaited.