A:LIVE / Morse Percussion / Review

A:LIVE

Morse Percussion

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

Friday (18 March 2022)

 

There is probably no better time than now for percussionists in Singapore. And there are likely more professional percussionists active here than ever before. The formation in 2020 of Morse Percussion, a professional ensemble in the mould of Kroumata or Repercussion, is a sign of these heady times. And there is no shortage of local composers to write for percussion, as illustrated in this concert of fascinating contrasts and variety.

 

Five composers were represented this evening, beginning with Tony Makarome’s Kuanzhai Xiangzi performed by four players. The title refers to a popular tourist district in Chengdu, Sichuan province known for its architecture, culture, wide and narrow streets. Rhythmically vibrant and light-hearted, it unapologetically fused Western with Eastern influences. Melodic interest was provided by vibraphone and marimba, while the slung Chinese cymbal gave it an exotic feel. Pentatonic melodies abounded, including one similar to the Oriental central section of Ravel’s Laideronette, Imperatrice des Pagodes from his Mother Goose ballet. Totally enjoyable.

 

August Lum’s A Well-Matched Fight V.2.0 featured just three percussionists on drums. Inspired by Chinese martial arts, notably the exploits of Marvel Comics’ hero Shang-Chi, this is a battle piece for unpitched percussion. A snare drum heralded a call to arms, and a showdown between two opposing players ensued. The work is not scored, and thus relying on improvisation by both drummers. Yet the work did not convey the idea of randomness, but rather something choreographed, judging by their pugilistic postures and wushu inflected movements on stage. Their mutual stares of daggers also gave the work an edge of high tension and uncertainty.   

 

Completely different was Avik Chari’s V.I.D.A., where the use of pre-recorded electronics dominated initial proceedings but gradually became a complement for the four percussionists. The title refers to life itself, but its initials spell roles played by the foursome, that of a visionary, introvert, dreamer and adventurer. The music was serene, even poetic, with a laid-back feel provided by the striking of a Tibetan bowl and stroking of a wooden frog. This is as much a nature piece as one inspired, according to the composer, by the emergence of artificial intelligence.    

 

The only aggressively atonal piece was Morsus by Chua Jon Lin, also the only woman composer among the five. Its title was partly derived from the ensemble’s name and the Latin word for bite, describing a sharp lancinating pain. Only four instruments – tam tam, marimba, vibraphone and snare-drum – were used. The tam tam was bowed rather than struck, producing a scraping timbral effect, while the snare drum struck when being laid upside down caused an unearthly buzzing sound. Call this avant garde, and it conjured up a suitably nightmarish soundscape.

 

Tour de force for the evening was Jonathan Shin’s Mad Dog Mancha, calling for seven players in all, with the composer himself at the piano. The title itself alluded to a quixotic Iberian spirit, one that is vigorous rhythmic, full of emphatic ostinatos yet totally unpredictable. Calling this West Side Story updated and on steroids would not be too far from the truth. Its grimy, inner city ghetto-like vibe coloured with a gamelan-like precision interplay (with no less than four pitched instruments) brought out the loudest cheers from a clearly enthused audience.   

 

Time just flew by in the hour-long concert, much helped by the pre-recorded interviews with the five composers. Morse Percussion, manned by virtuosos Derek Koh, Joachim Lim, Cheong Kah Yiong, Yuru Lee, Sng Yiang Shan and Tan Lee Ying, is a force for new music to be reckoned with. 

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.     

THE COLOUR PALETTE OF MY LIFE / Khor Ai Ming Vocal Recital / Review

THE COLOUR PALETTE OF MY LIFE

Khor Ai Ming Vocal Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Saturday (1 November 2014)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 November 2014 with the title "Soprano turns yesterday's pop tunes into art songs".

Celebrated as a choir conductor and vocal coach, Malaysia-born soprano Khor Ai Ming continues to develop as a solo recitalist in her annual recitals, which showcase a wide swathe of repertoire. There are other sopranos who can boast of more powerful lungs or flashier techniques but few are blessed with Khor’s versatility. After all, who is equally at home singing Chinese and Malay songs, Western classical standards and modern works such as Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire?

This two-hour long recital, performed without a break, showcased some 20 songs in a totally informal setting. Far from being a serious and staid affair, she chatted and bantered with her audience like a show-and-tell session, where the listeners were privy to her life story.

The first sentences of Harold Arlen’s Over The Rainbow were sung without accompaniment, a very difficult proposition given how exposed the lines were, but she did so fearlessly and without wavering. Sebastian Ho’s guitar accompaniment then emerged, providing a jazzy spin to the song.

Those impressed by Khor’s idiomatic grasp of Malay in P.Ramlee’s Getaran Jiwa and Jimmy Boyle’s Peteri Putera (in arrangements by Juliette Lai) will have learnt that she learnt Bahasa Malaysia as a first language in school while growing up in Kota Baru. Her father listened to Chinese pop records while her mother sang to raise funds to buy her school’s first piano. Those memories were relived in songs like Mo Ran’s Bu Liao Qing and Mai Tang Ge (Selling Sweets), also performed with much flair and allure.

Western classical repertoire was picked up in Singapore, represented by three Italian aria antiche, accompanied by pianist Bertrand Lee. Giordani’s Caro Mio Ben was given a sleek and clean reading, while Cesti’s Intorno All’idol Mio revealed clear enunciation and delicate nuances. In Paisiello’s Nel Cor Piu Non Mi Sento, florid embellishments were attempted in its variations but not all were pulled off with the greatest of ease.

She also thanked Singapore for presenting her with the greatest gift of all, her husband the drummer Tamagoh, whose band of guitaring Ho and bassist Tony Makarome provided an improvised interlude as she exited for a change of costume. They also gave back-up for a sequence of jazzy songs by William Walton, Betty Roe, Kurt Weill and Xavier Montsalvatge. The last composer’s Canto Negro was an uproarious dance-song in Catalan, with the slightest excuse for the band to jam and jive.

Chinese pop songs of yesteryear were now rendered like true art songs by Khor, and these represented the concert’s best moments. Only a stone cold heart would not be moved by her versions of Qian Shou, Shu Tian Shu or Ju Hua Tai (Chrysanthemum Pavilion) which was accompanied by Chinese brush painter Stephen Leong’s on-the-spot creation on a canvas. He was done by the end of the songs, a painting of a floral garden with added calligraphy.

The recital closed with Dick Lee’s Bunga Sayang and Harry Carroll’s I’m Always Chasing Rainbows (inspired by a Chopin melody), which roused a standing ovation. Khor Ai Ming’s next recital will be keenly awaited. 

Photos by the kind permission of Khor Ai Ming.

OF FLOWERS, BIRDS & SONGS / Khor Ai Ming Vocal Recital / Review

OF FLOWERS, BIRDS & SONGS

Khor Ai Ming Vocal Recital

Esplanade Recital Studio

Wednesday (30 October 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 1 October 2013 with the title "Khor's harmonious serenade to nature".

This reviewer has had the pleasure and privilege of being acquainted with Khor Ai Ming for about twenty years, when she was a young soprano in the Singapore Symphony Chorus. She has since risen to become chorus mistress of the Singapore Lyric Opera Children’s Choir and one of the nation’s most versatile and distinctive art song practitioners. That she gave the Singapore premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal melodrama Pierrot Lunaire in 2006 says quite a bit.

Her 80-minute long recital was a tribute to nature, birds and bees, inspired by the eco-garden cultivated by Khor and her husband Tamagoh in their second home in Johore. His photographs of nature were projected onto the back wall of the hall, as she sang three groups of songs with three visually stunning changes of costumes.

Adorning headgear that vaguely resembled a bird of paradise, her first six songs comfortably segued between Italian (Alessandro Scarlatti’s Violets), French (chansons by Ravel and Debussy), English (Matyas Seiber’s The Owl and the Pussycat) and German (Schoenberg’s Der Kranke Mond), sounding equally persuasive in all. As good voice teachers demand, her diction and articulation was spot on, and her always pleasant tone rose to a bright luminous ring in the upper registers.

She was sensitively accompanied by pianist Bertrand Lee for the songs with flautist Cheryl Lim making a cameo in the Schoenberg number. A Malay dancer accompanied by bassist Tony Makarome (also doubling on tabla) and drummer Tamagoh provided a spirited interlude before Khor emerged in an arresting gilded Malay wedding outfit.

The Malay songs Kuda Hitam (Black Horse) and Manuk Dadali (The Eagle), sung totally idiomatically with the requisite hip-swaying and sashaying, provided a hypnotic and visceral allure that bordered on inflaming passions. Makarome’s Malay Folksong Medley, including favourites like Burong Kakak Tua and Lenggang Kangkong, featured jazzy improvisations by pianist Mei Sheum.

Sheum’s arrangements of five Chinese songs greeted a further costume change, with Khor now in a cheongsam reminiscent of Shanghai chanteuses and temptresses. Another dancer, masked like some oriental phantom of the opera, joined in the fray as she crooned Mandarin oldies like the ubiquitous Yue Lai Xiang (Evening Fragrance), Chuan Ge (Boat Song), Ju Hua Tai (Chrysanthemum Terrace), Rose Rose I Love You, and Chen Li De Yue Liang (Moonlight in the City).

These songs, delivered with much showmanship and sincerity, clearly touched a harmonious chord with her audience, which was further rewarded with Khor’s encore of Only Love. Her annual recitals, of which this is the fifth, will be a keenly awaited fixture in the concert calendar.  

All photographs by courtesy of Khor Ai Ming and Tamagoh.

SPECTRUM: MUSIC AND WORDS / Conservatory New Music Ensemble / Review

SPECTRUM: MUSIC & WORDS / Conservatory New Music Ensemble

Esplanade Recital Studio / Sunday (10 April 2011)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 12 April 2011 with the title "Soaking in surprises".

With new music, one really does not know exactly what to expect. Just take each surprise as they come. The first was conductor Tony Makarome himself. More familiar as a jazz bassist, he ambled in attired like some extra on the set of Casablanca. Assuming the role of engaging introducer and stand-up comic, he looked like a cross between circus ringmaster and Uncle Peter of Babies Proms.

Breaking the ice which often frosts up concerts of contemporary music, his way was direct and unstuffy. Soon the music began, with luscious strains of America-based Indian composer Juhi Bansal’s song cycle The Lost Country of Sight, based on Neil Aitken’s words. The scoring was light and transparent, for just cello, piano and sparing percussion, enabling the words to be highlighted.

Unfortunately soprano Khor Ai Ming, audibly recovering from laryngitis and placed too posteriorly, was limited in range and projection. Struggling with the words, much of the nuances in this exotically-coloured idiom were lost in the fray. Another reading on a better day will be keenly anticipated.

No such problems existed for the programme’s main work, Morton Feldman’s Music & Words. The 1987 collaboration between the New York avant-garde composer and playwright Samuel Beckett explored an uneasy relationship between the spoken word and music, encapsulated in a radio play.

The protagonists, played by narrators Craig De Wilde and Thomas Hecht, were holed up in a mock-up of a disc-jockey’s studio, complete with illuminated “On The Air” sign, reel-to-reel tape-player and several LPs. The props did not obscure a tour de force from De Wilde, whose typical broadcaster’s drawl was as convincing as his efforts to sing like a drunkard. The droll and grizzled Hecht, enacting a godlike character called Croak, was the perfect foil. Seven musicians performed sequences in interjection, but seemed distant from where the action was, which was probably what both creators had intimated all along. While it will take some time for this Asian premiere to sink in, just sitting back to contemplate this 35-minute Godot-like effort and its inanities was reward enough.

The concert closed with Chinese composer Huang Ruo’s Chamber Symphony No.1, named after the Sung Dynasty patriot-general Yue Fei. Mostly instrumental, its blend of Chinese and Western idioms was alluring, closing with the players laying down their instruments and chanting incantations. In this case, music often better expresses feelings which elude words.