SSO CONCERT: A NIGHT ON BROADWAY / Review

A NIGHT ON BROADWAY

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Friday (29 July 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 August 2016 with the title "Brilliant night on Broadway".

Several years ago, an idea was mooted that a professional pops orchestra be formed in Singapore to cater to popular tastes in music-making and concert-going. That vision has not come to fruition, but many local groups – professional and amateur – have taken to producing pops concerts of late. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra has also joined the band wagon, but with a big difference: it has the best instrumental soloists playing in its ranks.

Thus SSO Associate Conductor Joshua Tan took pains to name the key musicians during the course of this pops concert that centred around Broadway musicals. The guest soloist was local jazz singer Rani Singam in her SSO debut, and she took some time to warm up to the backing of a 90-piece band.

Her opening number was reliving Eliza Doolittle (with Audrey Hepburn and the late Marni Nixon) in I Could Have Danced All Night from Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady. Sound amplification helped highlight her diction and enunciation, which were excellent, besides allowing some of her simple elaborations to be better heard. On The Street Where You Live was a man's song, and a tenor's voice would have been preferable here.

From Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound Of Music, My Favourite Things took on a personal and local touch as Singam managed to sneak in “roti prata” amongst whiskers on kittens and warm woollen mittens. By the time she reached Fantine's tear-jerker, I Dreamed A Dream from Schonberg and Boublil's Les Miserables, one of the evening's more poignant songs, she had more than warmed up.

In between vocal numbers, the orchestra played short overtures and medleys, the longest of which was Gershwin In Hollywood, arranged by Robert Russell Bennett, which included songs A Foggy Day, Love Walked In, Nice Work If You Can Get It and Love Is Here To Stay. In Bernstein's rumbling West Side Story Overture, the shout of “Mambo!” from the orchestra was tepid at best, and perhaps the audience be enlisted to make it sound like everyone meant it the next time around.

In the second half, Singam came into her own in Gershwin's 'S Wonderful from Funny Face,  including some ad-libbing in between and the soaring Someone To Watch Over Me from Oh, Kay! For these, she received even greater applause. Arguably even better were her versions of Somewhere and Tonight from West Side Story, which she hailed as her all-time favourite musical.

The high register needed for Maria's song Somewhere was easily overcome for the spine-tingling moments in a genuinely moving performance. In Tony's ecstatic Tonight, gender became immaterial as only attitude mattered, and Singam had heaps of it. The ghosts of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras in Bernstein's own recording were more than truly exorcised. 

The encore, Over The Rainbow from Harold Arlen's The Wizard Of Oz, a perfect mix of emoting and control was the icing of the cake. Even after two hours, one was sorry that it all had to end sometime.

SINGAPORE! A MUSICAL CELEBRATION III / Singapore Wind Symphony with Jeremy Monteiro and Friends / Review

SINGAPORE! 
A MUSICAL CELEBRATION III

Singapore Wind Symphony with

Jeremy Monteiro & Friends

Esplanade Concert Hall

Sunday (20 July 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 22 July 2014 with the title "High times with a giant of jazz".

After Jeremy Monteiro had performed in May with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra on tour in three concerts, conductor Yeh Tsung introduced him to the Chinese audience as a Singaporean virtuoso. “Not Chinese, not Indian, not European but a full-blooded Singaporean,” were the choice words used. Truly there cannot be a greater tribute to one’s nationality to have been described in such terms.

This concert by the Singapore Wind Symphony is part of an on-going series conceived by conductor Adrian Tan celebrating Singaporean music. On show was Cultural Medallion recipient Monteiro, who is as prolific a composer as he is pianist. What constitutes a national style of jazz is still being defined, but it was Monteiro’s eclectic and international style, drawing from disparate inspirations, which put Singaporean jazz into the global spotlight.

It began with Overture In C - The Story of Singapore, a non-jazz number which featured Malay-styled drumming and the pomp of British pageantry for a short round-up of local history. Then the giant of jazz strode out with his rhythm section including drummer Tama Goh, bassist Brian Benson and guitarist Rick Smith.

Monteiro led from the piano with soloists Julian Chan on saxophone and flautist Rit Xu shining in Helvetica, a fast number with some unstated Swiss connection, and the swinging Blues For The Saxophone Club, reliving high times at the old jazz club on Cuppage Terrace. Thrillingly he brought out the stock-in-trade scintillating runs on his right hand, which still amaze given his sizeable girth and apparent laid-back demeanour.

In Brothers, Kenneth Lun’s flugelhorn sang a silvery blues, as the jazzmen paid tribute to the big band fraternity within the wind orchestra. Olympia was a heady marching tune Monteiro wrote for some imaginary Olympic Games topped with a brash and brassy bluster. The frenetic Orchard Road, co-written with Ernie Watts in a traffic jam, would not have sounded out of place in a Rio mardi gras.

The young arrangers of the concert reads like
a Who's Who of Singaporean music.

Another Time, Another Place was a slow sentimental piece with harp thrown in which Monteiro figured could have made great movie music had he been asked. Typically it gradually worked itself into a grandstanding climax. Local jazz singer Rani Singam joined in three songs, the first being Swing With Me, originally known as Strutting Down Sukhumvit but now dressed with a distinct Broadway accent. 

Young composer-arranger Chok Kerong was generously afforded the spotlight with two songs with Singam, the meditative Frailty and the livelier You’ll Never Have To Dance Alone (Samba No.1), which showed that the art of song-writing here continues to thrive.

The 90-minute concert closed with Monteiro’s Soliloquy, which culminated with a solo cadenza and a swipe into the innards of the piano, and the thoughtful National Day Parade favourite One People, One Nation, One Singapore. In a Freudian moment, conductor Adrian Tan addressed the man of the hour as Sir Jeremy Monteiro, and then added, “Duke Ellington is great, but can’t we play some Jeremy Monteiro once in a while?” He had just echoed the thoughts of many in the audience. 

Jeremy Monteiro signs off with a wave.