JOE BURGSTALLER AND THE SINGAPORE WIND SYMPHONY / Review

JOE BURGSTALLER &

THE SINGAPORE WIND SYMPHONY

Victoria Concert Hall

Sunday (7 September 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 September 2014 with the title "Top brass shines with Singapore Wind Symphony".

Here is a piece of sound advice: If you want to catch a world-class brass soloist in action, go to a Singapore Wind Symphony concert. After great success with the New York Philharmonic’s Principal Trombonist Joseph Alessi earlier this year, the orchestra has now engaged the wizardry of Joe Burgstaller, who was for eight years the trumpeter and arranger of the legendary Canadian Brass.

The concert in the newly opened Victoria Concert Hall resounded with four brilliant concertante works, including two World Premieres. Malaysia-born Su Lian Tan’s Trumpet Concerto entitled Ming was heard for the first time in its two-movement form. The first movement Ming Dai (Ming Dynasty) had little or minimal Chinese influences, instead luxuriated in impressionistic hues inspired by antique brush paintings. This was contrasted with the new second movement Xian Dai (Modern) which took on freer means of expression, including adapting contemporary and popular dance idioms.

The trumpet’s part was typically thorny, full of virtuosic devices and a panoply of thematic ideas which sometimes bewildered the listener. Burgstaller swallowed these challenges whole, making light of its complexities. The ensemble led by Taiwanese-American guest conductor Apo Hsu coped well without skipping a beat, bringing much cohesion to the difficult score.

Composer Lee Jinjun acknowledges the good work
by the SWS and Joe Burgstaller.

More accessible was young Singaporean Lee Jinjun’s Variations on Chan Mali Chan, the premiere conducted by Adrian Tan, the local answer to Arban’s fantastic Carnival of Venice Variations. The familiar Malay melody was presented in many different and surprising guises, each imaginative and obliging Burgstaller to jump through a dizzying series of technical hoops. Expect this work to be heard far more often in the near future.

Further variety was provided in Rafael Mendez’s Virgin of the Macarena, a Spanish bullfight standard where Burgstaller gave a masterclass in circular breathing, which enabled a passage to be repeated for an extended duration without catching a breath. After that feat of sheer athleticism, a Vivaldi trumpet concerto – formal and ceremonial - completed the generous trumpet offerings.

The ensemble also distinguished itself in purely orchestral numbers. Benjamin Yeo’s Redhill – A Symphonic Folklore was a well-conceived piece of programme music which retold the ancient story of Bukit Merah and how a school of killer swordfish was repelled. His facility with lyricism, notably in the pivotal oboe solo, showed that he could be writing Broadway musicals pretty soon. Taiwanese composer-conductor Chung Yiu-Kwong’s Festival Celebration, which the set the traditional lion dance to music, showcased the ensemble’s excellent percussion section.

Robert Russell Bennett’s symphonic suite arrangement of music from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess was a delight with its hit tunes, and had ensemble trumpeter Adrian Flowers (above) taking the spotlight and doing the honours in the evergreen Summertime. If you are a wind player who likes to perform, joining the Singapore Wind Symphony and sharing in its vast pool of talent would be a dream come true.

All photographs by the kind permission of the Singapore Wind Symphony.

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.

JOSEPH ALESSI AND THE SINGAPORE WIND SYMPHONY / Review

JOSEPH ALESSI &

THE SINGAPORE WIND SYMPHONY

Sunday (23 February 2014)

Esplanade Concert Hall

This review was published in The Straits Times on 25 February 2014 with the title "Blast of a concert".

After the New York Philharmonic Orchestra completed its Asian tour in Taiwan last week, a few of its principals made the short trip to Singapore to give masterclasses at the Conservatory. In the case of its Principal Trombonist Joseph Alessi, he also headlined a concert with the Singapore Wind Symphony (SWS) conducted by Adrian Tan, providing a massive boon to brass enthusiasts here.

Central to this assignment was the World Premiere of young local composer Terrence Wong Fei Yang’s Trombone Concerto, also entitled Empire. With its inspiration being the 18^th and 19^th century Javanese kingdom of Mangkunegara, the solo trombone had a virtuosic narrative which served like a witness against a vast orchestral canvas that is turbulent history.

Its three contrasting sections began with the percussive and martial air of Menacing, with the trombone obliged to boldly emblazon its credentials in the thorny and dissonant solo part. The slower central section was more reflective, which gradually built up to a Benjamin Britten-like climactic catharsis.

Following a typically showy cadenza, the finale marked Furioso erupted with a volcanic violence dictated by drumrolls and an ominously persistent beat. The ends of empires are typically cataclysmic, echoed by Alessi’s trombone and its final brief oration which seemed to ask the rhetorical question: what is the point of it all?

The concerto was sandwiched by two showy pieces also starring Alessi, the more formal lines of Alexandre Guilmant’s Morceux Symphonique contrasted with the brilliant Brazilian samba vibe of Philip Sparke’s Sambezi. The inordinate range and versatility of the sliding brass instrument were all evident in this masterclass.

Alessi himself took on the baton for Paul Creston’s Celebration Overture, an upbeat work which gave clarinets, muted trumpet and the tuba grateful solos under the spotlight. SWS Music Director Tan opened the concert with Bernstein’s popular Candide Overture and closed with the Irish dance rhythms of The Seville Suite by Bill Whelan, better known for his Riverdance music.

There were three encore-like showpieces to end, all starring Alessi. Arthur Pryor’s Air Varie and Fantastic Polka were Paganini-like with their breathtaking feats of instrumental acrobatics, with the ensemble scrambling to keep up. The grand finale saw 18 young trombonists, including a number in street clothes, join Alessi in Meredith Willson’s 76 Trombones from The Music Man, one of the most famous marching band numbers of all. In short, the concert was a blast.

EARTH SONGS / Singapore Wind Symphony / Review

EARTH SONGS

Singapore Wind Symphony

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Sunday (31 March 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 2 April 2013 with the title "Rousing overtures for Mother Earth".

The Singapore Wind Symphony (SWS) is not a new outfit. It was formerly known as the National Theatre Symphonic Band (NTSB), and having undergone several personnel changes over the years, it was good to welcome back an old friend to vigourous concert life, now led by the dynamic young conductor Adrian Tan.

This concert, endorsed by the National Environment Agency, had a message of promoting conservation, and warning about climate change, global warming and mankind’s troubled relationship with planet Earth. Conductor Tan also doubled as master of ceremonies, doing his part by reminding the audience to save electricity, reduce, reuse and recycle.

Two Singaporean works were premiered, beginning with Wong Kah Chun’s Vox Stellarum Overture, a rousing work that rehashed the big sound found in those Star Trek and Star Wars movie soundtracks. The playing was impressive in its immediacy, as was its majestic portrayal of the view of our planet from outer space.

Philip Tan’s Landscapes Gradation was more down to earth, pitting two percussionists alongside the might of wind and brass. Ng Sok Wah, playing the marimba and vibraphone, was the more conventional, while Riduan Zalani manned a series of traditional Malay drums. Both had ample opportunity for solo display, and each were spectacular in their own way.

Their individual textures however became submerged when the orchestra joined in, having to contend with the ensemble’s own eight percussionists. There was a poignant little duet between tambourine and vibraphone (above) towards the end, symbolising that nature and man could co-exist harmoniously after all.

The largest work was Masamicz Amano’s Ohnai, a 30-minute long programme symphony written in remembrance of victims in the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. It went through the predictable course of depicting carefree life before the disaster, the violence and upheaval that followed, and a new dawn – introduced by Ow Leong San’s oboe plaint – with the triumph of the human spirit as the music is elevated to a loftier plane.

Also making an impact was Franco Cesarini’s Blue Horizons, a paean to the great oceans in three movements. The very personable score sounded familiar as it recycled ideas from Benjamin Britten’s sea-inspired opera Peter Grimes for the battle between the Leviathan and Krakken, before closing with a Mahlerian adagio, accompanied by recorded blue whale songs.

The concert also included music by John Mackey (Sheltering Sky, which quoted the popular hymn Shenandoah), David Maslanka (the short but energising fanfare Mother Earth), and Satoshi Yanagawa (the feel-good Hymn to the Sun), before closing with a jazzy arrangement of the John Lennon song Imagine. The audience was reminded of its lyrics again by the very enthusiastic conductor. Imagine all the people / Sharing all the world / And the world will live as one. Those are thoughts worth pondering about.