Piano Festival 2010

It was once again the Piano Fest and as usual, I would pick a couple of recitals to go to.

This year, the theme was "Chopin at 200" which was strangely, not really a programme full of Chopin works. Rather, it seem to be more of the influence of Chopin and his influences (even though the programme notes wasn't too obvious in that as well).

Anyway, I caught 2 performances this round. Incidentally, the music programme for both evenings were mostly not the "melodious" kind (in a good way), but how should I put it..."running/tinkling"?

25 June: Benjamin Grosvenor
A little shy of his 18th birthday, I was impressed by this unassuming young man's playing. The programme for the night was:

1) Kapustin - Concert Etudes Op.40
2) Liszt - Piano Sonata in B minor, S.178
3) Chopin - Nocturne in F-sharp major, Op.15 No.2, Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. post. and Scherzo No.3 in C-sharp minor, Op.39
4) Ravel - Gaspard de la nuit

I personally liked the Nocturnes (as usual), and Ravel's Gaspard, particularly the Le Gibet movement.
I was fortunately to get a seat in full view of Benjamin's piano playing and enjoyed it, as he plays fluidly, his fingers seem so light, yet also firm too. There were some parts where my eyes could hardly keep up with the speed of his fingers! Maybe it's just me, but I found he had firm control of his last finger especially during the "bell tolls", like it was "separated" from the rest of the fingers. Personally, I usually have problems as it's the the weakest finger (or simply because I never practise lah).

26 June: Piotr Anderszewski
Well, there wasn't any Chopin pieces this evening, but Piotr is Polish(-Hungarian), coming from the homeland of Chopin. The programme for the night: 

1) Bach - English Suite No. 5
2) Szymanowski - Metopes
3) Schumann - Six Etudes in Canonic Form, Op. 56
4) Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110

As my friend said, Piotr's playing was "light", rather French. And I agree with her. I liked the Schumann piece as well as the Beethoven. We were sitting rather far, so couldn't see his playing, nor expression (although it seemed rather emotionless), but you can tell when some pieces warranted a more expressive disposition than others.

Both nights heard 2 encore pieces.

Next piano concert? If no other programmes pop into my radar, it should be Lang Lang in Oct.

What does your Father do?

Was reading this article on "Been Thinking About" and it struck me that gee...I've never really approached this aspect of our Heavenly Father this way before.

Quoting Mart:

If his (Jesus) father is now our father, and if the family business is now in our hands, I’ve been trying to think how we would answer the question, “What does your Father do?”

An interesting food for thought. What would your answer be?

Lenka

I recently became a 'fan' of Lenka, who has really catchy and "light" songs. One might say it's a little cutesy...maybe it's because of her voice. 1 of her more popular songs from her self-titled album is The Show, which was what made me interested in her music when I heard it on the radio. I liked it enough to pick it as my guitar presentation for my beginner course.

Another song which I kinda like is Trouble is a Friend. It has this very "old-school" (don't know how to describe) feel to it.

Cheery!

Adjusting & assimilating

ok, it's been about a week or so of actually getting my hands dirty into really working the areas of my new job scope and I must say things aren't looking as bad as I think they would be. It's still tough and draining as there hasn't been time for me to be properly trained or inducted into the job due to tight deadlines, but I can actually understand what's going on, not to mention the working terms and standards (still learning), deliver (with the help of samples) and contribute to discussions!

We have been having really intense discussions the past week due to deadline and I felt it was pretty ok working with the team. Who knows, maybe it'll be a better life than previously, under a different supervisor/dept. Hopefully I'll get appreciated more.

I still need to figure how to manage my time well, even as I try to clear my backlog and also the handing over of previous job scope matters.

Emily of Emerald Hill

This would be my 2nd time watching this, the first being the open rehearsal last week. And this time, I took more effort in analysing the play. I was more reserved in making any judgement previously as:
1) it was a rehearsal, and
2) I didn't want that to influence my (or any others') viewing of the actual performance.

And this time, the whole setup and overall experience was better than the other day.

One question came to mind immediately - would <Emily> be such a success if it weren't for the excellent performance of the actress? Maybe also the theatre scene 25 years back was different and such a focus on heritage rare, which still is few. A monologue was also pretty uncommon.

Margaret Chan put up a splendid performance tonight. It's really a rather difficult role to play, trying to keep the audience 'engrossed' with a full-length "narrative biographical monologue". That sounds boring enough if it's not done well. The player needs to be able to have good storytelling skills (not just acting) and at the same time be in character, making it 'real'. You must understand that most of the story is supposedly happening in Emily's mind and that the audience (and actress) will need a lot of imagination to grasp the going-ons and other characters in the plot, not to mention lots of time shifting as she reminiscences. As Margaret mentioned before, there's a need to use different nuances and changes in tones and pitch in voice, body language, and I must add, the ability to bring out the humour in some of the lines that would fall flat if not carried out well.

However, I preferred some of the intensity she displayed during the rehearsal (that particular session was somewhat the "breakthrough" session) where she really "became" Emily at certain points. E.g. the ending part of the 1st segment, I was moved during the rehearsal and she cried then too. And also the ending when she was old and mumbling of past scenes, especially when she called Richard. The sense of loneliness and regret/heartbreak was stronger.

Now I come to the storyline. I didn't talk much of the story previously as I didn't focus on that (or wanted to reveal so much). The first half was about her relationship with her first son, Richard. They were very close but then again, there could be a love-hate relationship as she "controlled" him too much, leading to his suicide.
The second half was the relationship with her husband. I believe it got worse due to Richard's passing? But he was already having an affair then. Maybe he was also trying to break free from her matriarchal ways and hated her for that.
Emily was an intelligent girl and knew how to strategise. She grew up fending for herself and more so when she got married, learning to survive such that she rose up to head the whole family, trying to be the good wife and mother as she knows it. She rounds off addressing these two relationships. I guess this somehow frames the show, separating and emphasizing the two roles Emily plays in her life.

The post-show dialogue was a short lesson in theatre studies, just like the rehearsal. Margaret had gave a lengthier answer for the common "how different" (I was more curious on whether she brought new elements into her performance) during the rehearsal compared to tonight, and basically, it's the depth and maturity that's come into her portrayal. It's really important how society affects theatre and I liked the discussion about how a play becomes classical. It's true people get caught up with "how it was" while everything changes so fast in the surrounding. And Margaret pointed out 1 important point. Space is now literally non-existent; there's no concept of time or space, coz everything is so instantaneous and all leap over the space in the current world. You can say we are more networked, but I think the reverse if you think of it. There's no depth.
Theatre studies, how interesting it would be!

This pretty much rounds up my Arts Fest 2010 experience. I wonder how Ivan Heng's performance will be like. It should be a more comic take?

Axis of Awesome

Ok, this took a long time in publishing.

Axis of Awesome's Infinity Rock Explosion! was part of the Flipside programmes organised by Esplanade in conjunction with the Singapore Arts Festival. I bought tickets to this as a farewell treat for a friend who was transferring out of my dept, and we all could use a good laugh.

Axis of Awesome is a three-men band who make parodies of songs, with 1 of them looking like Jack Black (which the trio did not fail to take a dig). They are probably most famous for their Four Chords song, which was how I knew about them.

What kept ringing in my ears was Birdplane, which was a parody of Five for Fighting's It's Not Easy (the Superman song). Their lyrics? "I'm more than a bird, I'm more than a plane...I'm a birdplane". Ha!

The performance was hilarious, but there were some parts that were rather "sensitive".

An accidental discovery

It was a serendipitous stop as my parents and I lost our way and ended up at Defu Lane while maneuvering around Sengkang and we happen to pass by a branch of Seafood Paradise here. Imagine a restaurant in the midst of flatted factories. So we made our dinner stop here, instead of continuing to find our way to our intended teochew muoi place at Simon Road.

It wasn't too bad. We had stir fried mee sua, chinese spinach with 3 types of eggs, fried cereal beancurd and their soup of the day. I liked the tofu and spinach.

After our meal, we discovered we were actually very near the main road, the familiar Hougang Ave 3.

Up Close With Emily

As a perk for Arts Fest Club members, members can sign up for the Festival Backstage programme(s) and incidentally, there was one for the open rehearsal for Emily on Emerald Hill. So I took the afternoon off 3 days ago and attended it.

It was an enriching experience. I've not read the full play before, but an excerpt can be found on http://nora.nl.sg. Basically, open rehearsals allow the production team to get feedback from some external audience and it's also an educational process. I believe that anyone serious in theatre should at 1 point or another, expose oneself to the workings that goes behind a production. Whether from a director's point, actor's point, sound, music, sets, etc., you need to at least have a peek to understand and appreciate the full effect, and be aware of the effort and coordination that needs to be put in to give the production that audience experience. Any part that goes wrong will affect the viewer's perception.

The set up was pretty simple, as the actual sets weren't ready yet, and some video projection was not ready. It was held at a rehearsal studio in SMU. The lighting was still in progress, which wasn't well-executed during this rehearsal.

Got some tips on acting techniques and "art" from Margaret Chan, like how not to play sad, actor's choice, balancing between being the character and being the actor, e.g. if one gets too into character or emotional, you'll tend to forget lines. Also on how not to direct. One could also see how seriously Margaret Chan took her role. For a 61-year-old to play a 30 plus character required some effort, especially as she said, the kneeling part. It was also difficult to keep audience interested as it was a pretty narrative piece and a one-person show. She did it well.

I'll be catching the actual performance next Friday, so am looking forward to see how it would have progressed by then.

The Manganiyar Seduction

visual music...how's that for a concert?

I had the privilege to get complimentary tickets to this concert, and the gala concert at that on 20 May, with cocktail reception and many VIPs like President Nathan and MM Lee, and other ministers. It was really perfect timing as I happened to have this window of time for the show, as the day before, I was watching Those Who Can't, Teach and the next day I was watching Axis of Awesome.

Ok, visual music doesn't really describe it. It was traditional Indian music, performed theatrically. The Manganiyars are a caste of Muslim musicians who traditionally performed for kings. Directed by Royston Abel, a dazzling experience is created as 43 musicians sat in 36 red-curtained cubicles arranged in 4 rows, on top of each other.

I think the conductor probably had a more difficult time since he had to make sure the musicians could see him from where he was, all four rows of them. The instrument that stood out for me was the Jew's harp (it's called morchang here) which produces a "twang" sound. (Fortunately my short stint in studying ethnomusicology helped me identify the instrument). I didn't understand what they were singing (which didn't help in fighting my jetlag) but I believed I liked their 3rd piece "Neendarli" which was a more melodic piece, a song of love and affection of a wife for her husband. The best part was when all the cubicles were lit up and the full "orchestra" was playing with resounding tones.

Those Who Can't, Teach

Two weeks ago, I started my "exposition" to experience this year's Singapore Arts Festival. My first stop? Haresh Sharma's Those Who Can't, Teach. Notice the significance of the comma in the title. It's been a while so some thoughts might have been lost, but I'll try to give what I recall.

This was actually a re-staging of the said title by Necessary Stage (same theatre group) and directed by the same director then, Alvin Tan, but with an updated context of present day school life and society. What I can say is that it made fighting my jetlag easy!

This new update was 'drastically' different from the original (you can find a copy of that on http://nora.nl.sg/). Yes, it was a school setting still with a dedicated Mrs Phua, an "usurping" Ricky and delinquent students. But society has changed much, what with technology, scandals, etc. However, the underlying issues are still the same and still exists. Problems kids face, the negligence, the system...

The show was very entertaining and funny at many points as we relate to what we have heard, seen or experienced. How difficult it is to balance work and family, making choices. So it's true that teachers can only get married in either June or December only? It is very true how your teacher will influence you in future. If you have a good teacher, you'll more likely be inspired. Then there are those scholars whom most know will have a clear path ahead of them, regardless of whether they can really do the job. And some who just take teaching as "just another job".
However, it ended on a sad note, in my opinion, contrary to what some pointed out due to the "joyous" reminiscence of a celebration. How in the end, Mrs Phua, the dedicated teacher was left alone in an old folks' home, going senile and regretting how she neglected her family. It was a poignant moment and was all her hard work really worthed it? Must ask the teachers. It was touching too to see that the most 恶劣 student was the one who came regularly to visit her. But he didn't seem happy, having conformed to expectations of society, with regrets too.

As usual, the actors had to play more than 1 role. It's funny how you know why some characters aren't appearing because the actor was acting in another role, but they "point it out". I think all the actors played their roles very well. It was interesting how the actors themselves came up with the portrayal of their roles, new script and interpretations (as they mentioned during the post-show dialogue), which they drew from their observations and personal experiences.

It was a good production, mainly on how well it relates to Singapore's society and structure, and how well everything was played and acted out. Of course, it showed how dynamic theatre can be, the amount of improvisation and adaptability that a script can have. I think that's how it is with plays that deals with social issues. I think Haresh and Alvin work really well together (it's been so many years) and their openness to creativity are commendable as arts practitioners. One can't be too 执著 at times. How everyone interprets a piece can vary greatly.