SHIOK!? YOU ARE (NOT) WHAT YOU EAT / Singapore International Festival of Arts

I must admit to not having spent a single cent for tickets at the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA). None this year. Nil last year. And zilch for the last decade or so. Yet I had just stumbled on one of its exhibits. Located at the Victoria Concert Hall / Victoria Theatre Atrium, Shiok!? You Are (Not) What You Eat by Singaporean visual artist Yang Derong is free of charge. So, I have still spent nada.

This art installation challenges us on what we love best - eating. But are we eating right? Or are we eating rubbish? Is what we eat environmentally sustainable? Or are we contributing to the destruction or degradation of planet Earth? The exhibit brings together objects of plastic - actual toys, decorations and kitsch - as an indictment of our eating habits. We are consuming plastic like never before, and in the process ingesting indigestible microplastics. 

Many of the articles on display are familiar and quaint, many from the collective memories over the decades. Nostalgia and regression to childhood times is strong, and that is what makes this exhibit memorable. We are comforted by its familiarity and friendliness, but are repulsed by what all this actually means. Every time we eat, and everything we consume adds to the end of the world. That is a frightening thought, but Carry On Makan anyway.   

The walk-in giant kaleidoscope
was a very nice and colourful touch.

Another thought just occurred to me. So, so much plastic here. How to recycle and with absolutely nothing biodegradable, how to dispose? Our landfills are filling up quick, so let's just donate them to Indonesia.

To be found and consumed
at your nearest HDB kopitiam.

What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice, and all things nice.

And little boys?
Sotong, kup poh and lew lian.

This exhibit runs till 30 May 2026.

You Are (Not) What You Eat!

MEPAAN / Singapore International Festival of Arts / Review

MEPAAN

Singapore International Festival of Arts

Pasir Panjang Power Station

Friday (20 May 2022)

This review was published by The Straits Times on 25 May 2022 with the title "Multidisciplinary show explores cultural traditions".

 

Imagine a people who live today as they lived before the dawn of history, and coming face-to-face with the 21^st century. Does a civilisation of shifting cultivators and headhunters for millennia embrace modernism and change, or stick to the old ways of the forefathers? These questions were posed in Mepaan, the grand opener of this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA).

 

Mepaan comes from the indigenous Kayan language from the island of Kalimantan (Borneo), meaning “always”. In this multi-discipline and multi-cultural show directed by Natalie Hennedige, the answers were neither simple nor direct. The collaboration between the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (conducted by Yeh Tsung) and Tuyang Initiative from Miri, Sarawak (representing the Kayan and Kenyah peoples, helmed by Juvita Tatan Wan) could have heavily weighted in favour of the former. In reality, the three-person team of the latter more than held it own despite overwhelming odds.

 

Within the cavernous space that is the repurposed Pasir Panjang Power Station, Wong Chee Wai's set design cleverly placed the orchestra on terraces, leaving space for a strategically-placed ceremonial headdress and a lit-up booth with the traditional sape (4-stringed boat-shaped lute) at the rear. The two fixtures were linked by ramps running on both sides around the orchestra.

Photo: PianoManiac

 

The stage was thus set for a visual and aural spectacle of Brian Gothong Tan’s multi-media direction which also encompassed Sean Lee’s photography and Harry Frederick’s films projected on two large screens. Andy Lim’s vivid lighting design was matched by Max Tan’s costumes for the indigenous artists and orchestral members.

Photo: PianoManiac

 

Original and eclectic was the music, including three world premieres, opening with Eric Watson’s rousing Island Sunrise. The composers had worked with the Sarawakians to involve their folksongs and dance rhythms, all seamlessly stitched into the overall fabric. For example, Koh Cheng Jin’s tender Song Of The Night Wind had incorporated two Kenyah love songs Ti Ruti Lun (Come And Sleep) and Sayang Dau Kenai Tawai (My Love For You Cannot Be Spoken). Other works by Kong Zhixuan and Tang Jianping helped fill up the 75-minute-long programme.

 

Chinese traditional instruments sounded particularly idiomatic, especially dizis and high winds which approximated birdsong and evoked mystery. Pipas and ruans were placed near the front, their timbres being related to the plucked sape. Chinese percussion provided the beats of pomp and pageantry besides mimicking throbbing rainfall.  

 

Stealing the show were Tuyang’s Mathew Ngau Jau and Adrian Jo Milang, standing out with their raucous Kenyah songs, punctuated with occasional shouts. The 70-year old Jau’s showcase of sape playing was sadly too brief compared with the 20-something Milang’s pugilistic dance moves. Both represented extreme ends of the generation divide, the frail shamanist alderman standing head-to-head with the youthful sword-wielding warrior.

 

The climax saw the ceremonial passing of the headdress from Jau to Milang, accompanied by Wang Chenwei’s March To Eternity, the symbolism of which would not be lost to the appreciative audience. Will age-old traditions of Sarawak survive the test of time? The answer should only be mepaan, or always. 

Photo: PianoManiac

Photographs by Debbie Y. (unless otherwise stated), by courtesy of The Arts House Ltd.

COMPASSION: Online Chamber Concerts / Singapore International Festival of Arts / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2021

COMPASSION Chamber Concerts

Online videos-on-demand on SISTIC Live

 

BE COMFORTED NOW: BACH CANTATAS

Red Dot Baroque

 

BEFORE LIFE AND AFTER

Felicia Teo Kaixin, Jonathan Charles Tay 

& Jonathan Shin

 

ECHOES OF FIRE AND WATER

Ensemble Aequilibrium

 

HEALING RHAPSODY

Ding Yi Music Company

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 16 June 2021 with the title "Emotional healing through music".

 

The heightened measures of the present circuit breaker could not have come at a worse time for the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA). Limited audiences were further restricted to 50 persons per event, and live shows of the Compassion series of chamber concerts involving singers and wind players had to be cancelled. These were, however, recorded and made available for viewing on demand, a reminder that art and artists provide solace and comfort, and will ultimately survive adversity.

 

Red Dot Baroque, Singapore’s only dedicated professional baroque ensemble, presented three sacred cantatas of J.S.Bach which explored the pain of human suffering and healing through faith in God. Sung in German, Bach’s Lutheran perspectives still ring true in modern times.

 

The world-weariness in Ich Habe Genug (I Have Enough, BWV.82) was poignantly portrayed by soprano Joyce Lee Tung while bass-baritone John Lee manly broached the subject of sacrifice in Ich Will Den Kreuzstab Gerne Tragen (I Shall Gladly Bear The Cross, BWV.56). Both singers were united for Ach Gott Wie Manches Herzeleid (Oh God How Much Heartache, BWV.58), which closed the concert with a spirit of blessed optimism.

 

Art songs of three 20^th century composers, Frenchmen Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc, and Briton Benjamin Britten were the subject of Before Life And After. Tenor Jonathan Charles Tay ran the full gamut of emotions in Britten’s Winter Words, eight settings of Thomas Hardy poems, encompassing pastoral innocence and seasonal bleakness. Its culmination was the titular final song, which pondered what came before “a time there was... when none suffered sickness, love or loss”.

 

The French songs from soprano Felicia Teo Kaixin were more lyrical but no less gripping, such as Ravel’s melismatic Kaddish (a Hebrew song of mourning) and Poulenc’s deceptively congenial Poems of Louis Aragon, with words by a famed Surrealist and Communist. In between groups of songs, pianist Jonathan Shin performed movements from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, each dedicated to a friend killed in the First World War.   

 

Newly-formed new music group Ensemble Aequilibrium’s eclectic programme of 20^th and 21^st century works had one thing in common: uneasy calm that comes before impending doom and the aftermath that follows. Japanese icon Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Spell and Singaporean Young Artist Award Recipient Chen Zhangyi’s Walks On Water set the tone, with the fluid realm providing more than a modicum of sustenance and comfort. The atmosphere conjured was haunting and dissonances paradoxically soothing, especially with the use of flute, harp and piano. 

 

This continued into Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Cendres (Ashes), a diametrically opposed scenario of consumption by fire. Volume and tempo were upped but stopped short of outright violence, as if stilled by the warmth of embers. The main work was American avant-gardeist George Crumb’s Eleven Echoes of Autumn, which employed only four instruments: piano (with “string piano” techniques), viola, flute and clarinet. This apparent economy however translated to a myriad of tonal effects, its very short connected movements suggesting that “less is more”.

 

Healing Rhapsody was the offering of Ding Yi Music Company, conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, in response to civilisation’s perpetual cycles of crisis and rehabilitation over the ages. Joyce Koh’s stark but dynamic Isskimmer was a reflection of natural beauty as viewed in ice formations. In Benjamin Lim Yi’s Memory, liuqin, cello and sheng starred as concertante instruments, with its rich melodic content signifying nostalgia and yearning.    

 

Buddhist precepts dominated the rest of the programme, with Chow Jun Yi’s serene and lushly-scored Zen Thoughts a meditation on impermanence, the current strife being just a passing phase. Luo Mai Shuo’s specially-commissioned Compassion, which lent its title to the entire chamber series, received its world premiere. Sounds of nature were recreated in its quiet introduction, the music then blossoming into a hope that humanity aspires to kindness and ultimately love. Finally, the vigourous chant-like closing pages of Wan Yun Fei’s Bodhi, the embodiment of enlightenment, provided an upbeat end to a concert that promised healing, and delivered. 

COMPASSION / Singapore International Festival of Arts / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2021

 

THE CONSOLER

Take 5

The Arts House

Wednesday (19 May 2021)

 

GHOSTS OF YESTERYEAR

Morse Percussion

Esplanade Concert Hall

Thursday (20 May 2021)

 

ALONE TOGETHER

Li Churen, Yang Shuxiang & Leslie Tan

The Arts House

Saturday (22 May 2021)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 26 May 2021

 

Compassion is the series of eight chamber concerts in this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts, specially curated to reflect on the Covid pandemic and its tragic toll. Over the past year, the nation had gone into partial lockdown, lives and livelihoods were lost, but ways of coping were found and an indomitable spirit prevailed.

 

Four concerts involving voice and wind instruments had been cancelled, but the remaining recitals still had cogent stories and messages to convey. The Consoler provided an hour of 20^th century piano quintet music, forged from the trials of two world wars.

 

The Russian Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet was conceived under a pall of Stalinist totalitarianism, hence its seemingly traditional forms were coloured by a tragicomic personal voice. Frenchman Charles Koechlin’s Piano Quintet composed in the wake of First World War carnage and the Spanish influenza pandemic gave the impression of sunshine breaking through a sea of dense clouds.

 

Take 5, comprising pianist Lim Yan, violinists Foo Say Ming and Lim Shue Churn, violist Janice Tsai (replacing Chan Yoong Han) and cellist Chan Wei Shing, wrung out every bit of pathos possible from both works. While Shostakovich’s faux congeniality posed an illusion of hope, it was Koechlin’s humanity which yielded true consolation.

 

The four young musicians of Morse Percussion - Derek Koh, Joachim Lim, Julia Tan and Cheong Kah Yiong – had a field day in two works by American composers. David T. Little’s Haunt of Last Nightfall memorialised the 1981 massacre of innocents during the El Salvador civil war. Pitched (marimbas and metallophones) and unpitched (drums) percussion with the aid of electronics painted a harrowing scenario which traversed from serenity to violence, climaxing with the simulation of gunshots and machine-gun fire.

 

By contrast, four movements from Philip Glass’ Aguas De Amazonia (Waters of the Amazon), adapted for percussion from piano pieces, provided soothing balm to the ears. The novel use of slung cow-bells, crotales, wine bottles, water-filled glasses and bowls conjured an ethereal and other-worldly sonority and feel, suggesting that a reconciliation with Mother Nature be the best salve for the world’s ills.   

Trio of Li Churen, Yang Shuxiang and Leslie Tan
at the Poland Constitution Day concert.

 

Alone Together saw solos, duos and a trio from the newly formed trio of pianist Li Churen, violinist Yang Shuxiang and cellist Leslie Tan. The music of Poland prominently in various degrees of carthasis works by Penderecki, Wieniawski and Panufnik. Li’s original solo compositions included improvisations on Schumann, Mozart and Chopin and were strong on nostalgia. 

The concert’s most poignant moments came in the Intermezzo from Francis Poulenc’s Sonata For Violin and Piano, composed in memory of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered during the Spanish Civil War. The trio’s encore, Piazzolla’s melancolic slow tango Oblivion, showed that music - in all its infinite variety - had the power to heal. 

A SONG FOR LOUIS / Louis Soliano & Friends / Review

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL 

FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2021:

A SONG FOR LOUIS

Louis Soliano & Friends

Victoria Theatre

Friday (14 May 2021)

An edited version of this review was published in The Straits Times on 19 May 2021 with the title "Soliano shines in starry tribute".

 

This latest edition of the Singapore Festival of Arts (SIFA) was a time for reflection and contemplation as the nation emerged from the pandemic crisis. However, this all changed with the announcement of a new lockdown arising from increased number of Covid cases detected.

 

The pair of tribute concerts organised for local jazz legend and Cultural Medallion recipient Louis Soliano were affected by new event restrictions imposed. The original audience size of 150 had to be reduced to 100 for each show, which was a pity but small blessings given that both would have been cancelled if held two days later.

 

An air of expectancy hung over the proceedings as socially-distanced patrons took to their seats. There was no mingling, but greetings were cheerily exchanged over rows and aisles. Warm applause erupted when the performers emerged behind a screen illuminating the 79-year-old maestro’s lifetime landmarks playing Wes Montgomery’s West Coast Blues. Soliano was born to migrant musicians and made his name performing drums in hotel lounge bands, and playing for American GIs during the Vietnam War. A storied career ensued before the Cultural Medallion in 2018 became his crowning achievement.

 

His collaborating performers read like a Who’s Who in Singapore’s jazz scene. Vocalist Joanna Dong was the chirpy host, styling Gershwin’s S’Wonderful before ushering in Malay pop icon Rahimah Rahim’s deeply felt rendition of P.Ramli’s Getaran Jiwa. On a video sent from Australia, Don Gomes accompanied himself on piano in Cole Porter’s Just One Of Those Things.

 

The irrepressible Richard Jackson gave a masterclass in scat-singing and ad-libbing in Chick Corea’s Spain, partnered by an equally free-wheeling flautist Rit Xu,, but where was Louis? Forty minutes into the show and midway through Paul Desmond’s Take 5, the diminutive figure of Soliano sashayed onstage to join Jackson in the improvisation.

 

The physical disparity between the two was obvious, but the wizened veteran commanded the stage with a rich and low bass-like voice that belied outward appearances. Size does matter, it seemed. Now making himself comfortable on a drum-set partnered by pianist Jeremy Monteiro and bassist Tony Makarome, the trio polished off Jules Styne’s Just In Time. Speaking about time, the 50 minutes in which Soliano appeared passed much faster that the 40 minutes that came before. Call this relativity, but this listener defers to that elusive factor called star quality.

 

With fellow drummers Bobby Singh (doubling on tabla), Jimmy Lee and Tama Goh, the quartet of percussionists had whale of a jam before the entire crew returned for Duke Ellington’s Caravan. Harry Warren’s mash-up of  The More I See Of You and There Will Never Be Another You saw the more reflective side of Louis the vocalist. He had to close on an upbeat high, and so Charles Strouse’s A Lot Of Livin’ To Do did the trick.

 

As an encore, Louis with Monteiro and guitarist Andrew Lim ended the evening with Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust, and this was amply rewarded with a well-earned standing ovation.      

BORDERLANDS / Singapore International Festival of Arts / Review

BORDERLANDS

Wu Man (Pipa) & 

Master Musicians from the Silk Route

Singapore International 

Festival of Arts 2016

SOTA Theatre Studio

Thursday (15 September 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 September 2016 with the title "Tracing roots of pipa in journey of discovery".

In Borderlands, world-renowned pipa virtuosa Wu Man traced the roots of her instrument all the way to Central Asia, to a time of antiquity when cross-fertilisation of different cultures was a way of life. For this concert, she was joined by five Uyghur musicians and a dancer from Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China's Far West.

A contemplative pipa solo Gobi Desert At Sunset by Wu ushered in Chebiyat Muqam, the first of several excerpts from muqams to be performed. A muqam is the traditional Uygur suite of pieces involving poetry, singing, instrumental music and dance. Typically a muqam would take several hours to complete and the full set of 12 could last the best part of a day.

For the purpose of this evening, Chebiyat Muqam, essentially an extended love song with erotic undertones, breezed through 25 minutes of sensuous and often exuberant music. The chief protagonist was vocalist Sanubar Tursun who also strummed on a dutar (a long-necked lute), whose pristine voice and haunting inflexions recalled an ancient age and exotic locales.

In the feverish climaxes, she was joined by Mijiti Younusi (on tambur, another plucked lute), Rexiati Abudureheman (satar, bowed lute), Adili Abudukelimu (kalun, a dulcimer struck by sticks) and Alifu Saideke (hand drum), who added their male voices to the fray. Time stood still for this unlikely entertainment, which had the drawing power of a muezzin's call to prayer, heady aroma of freshly burnt incense and earthly pleasures of a seraglio.

All the singing was in Uyghur, a Turkic language still spoken in Xinjiang alongside Han Chinese putonghua. An added visual element was the colourful presence of dancer Delare Maimaitiyiming whose nodding head movements and swirling revolutions took on the spectacular in Mountain Spring. Here she balanced six bowls on the top of her head without spilling a drop of water.

It was back to Wu Man, who assimilated her journey of discovery of Central Asian music in Song of the Kazakh, a virtuoso showpiece far removed from Chinese pipa music which unveiled Western harmonies and hints of polyphony.

In Hanleyun, two songs were joined. The first was about life experiences, of how a nightingale who has not suffered winter would not know the joys of spring, and the second on a homeland that resembled the Garden of Eden. For Ajam, all the plucked strings came together for a slow to fast and vigorous love-in.

For the final muqam excerpts, dulcimer-player Abudukelimu displayed his throaty baritone-like vocals (Dolan Muqam) and joined dancer Maimaitiyiming in an animated “pas de deux” (Nawa Muqam), relating the plaints of a desert hermit and sage.

The 90-minute concert ended like how it started, in near total darkness, with Wu in pipa solo Night Thoughts, a study on solitude. Face to face with true artistry, how these precious minutes elapsed, like dew evaporating under the morning sun.   

Wu Man and her ensemble meet with
SSO violinists Kong Zhao Hui & Yin Shu Zhan.