Singapore, 4 July 2014 (Friday) – The Singapore Youth Chinese Orchestra (SYCO) will present its annual concert on 19 July 2014, Saturday, at SCO Concert Hall. SYCO conductor Quek Ling Kiong and Young Assistant Conductor-in-Residence Moses Gay will lead the youth orchestra in an evening of Chinese classics.
The concert will kickstart with the world premiere of Liu Qing’s Puppet Show. The plucked-strings section will then perform three movements from Chinese Sights and Sounds – Little Cabbage, Riddle Song and Remembering. Arranged by Bao Yuan Kai, Chinese Sights and Sounds has been performing worldwide for more than 20 years. It had been greatly received by the Chinese population all over the world, becoming one of the most popularly performed work for Chinese woodwinds and strings. Little Cabbage is a folk song depicting the pitiful plight of a boy who was ill-treated by his stepmother. Its touching melody impersonates the boy’s nostalgic affection towards his mother. Riddle Song is a humorous child rhyme from Yunnan which uses the rhythm of “tongue-twister” to portray the lively question-answer conversation between sisters. The bright tone and light-hearted rhythm displayed by the woodwind and plucked-strings instruments will highlight the mocking scene in this piece. The last movement, Remembering, illustrates the homesickness of people who migrated from Fujian, China to Taiwan’s southern peninsula, Hengchun, three hundred years ago.
Thereafter, the bowed-strings section will showcase its elegance in Reflections of the Moon on Erquan. This piece, composed by Hua Yan Jun, nicknamed Ah Bing the Blind, expresses the feelings and predicament of the pitiful musician before he began to vision a better future.
SYCO will also present Phoon Yew Tien’s Chinese Music for All Seasons and Wang Zhi, Li Zhen Gui and Yang Nai Lin’s Charms of Xiangxi. Chinese Music for All Seasons uses a well-known Chinese folk tune Sceneries of Wuxi as its theme. Through presenting the styles of Chinese orchestral music of various periods, it introduces the development of Chinese orchestral music and encourages appreciation of Chinese instruments and music. This performance will be accompanied with commentary by narrator Leanne Ong. Derived from folk tunes of the Tujia and Miao tribes from Western Hunan regions, Charms of Xiangxi depicts the spirit and optimism of people in Western Hunan.
SYCO will play Romance of the Old Capital at the finale, an impressionistic piece composed by Chen Ning-chi, which will bring the audience through a journey back to history. Don’t miss this SYCO concert and be inspired by their zest and passion!
Leanne Ong Teck Lian graduated from National Taiwan Normal University and subsequently from Intercultural Theatre Institute, Singapore. She taught theatre in the Shanghai-Singapore International School and is currently a primary school Chinese Mother Tongue Language teacher. In the last two decades, she performed major roles in numerous plays, including Kuo Pao Kun’s The Day I Met the Prince and Guo Mo Ruo’s Tiger Tally. She has also been collaborating with Drama Box to conduct Chinese Speech Workshop for local theatre practitioners since 2011.
SYCO is a group of highly talented young musicians of age 11 to 26 years old. SYCO is under the management of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) since 2003 and has held its premiere concert in 2004. From June 2009, under a collaboration of the Ministry of Education and SCO, SYCO was elevated to the status of National Project of Excellence (NPOE), with the vision to nurture potential talents and groom them to be the future pillars of Singapore’s Chinese orchestral music scene. Only the finest musicians, through auditions, are chosen to be members of SYCO. In 2012, twelve SYCO members have won awards at the National Chinese Music Competition organized by the National Arts Council. As part of SYCO’s achievement, SYCO was invited to perform at the Taiwan Hsinchu Chinese Music Festival on 17 July 2013.
Conductor: Quek Ling Kiong Conductor: Moses Gay Narrator: Leanne Ong
Singapore Youth Chinese Orchestra
Concert details:
SYCO Annual Concert: Musical Landscapes for All Seasons
Date: 19 July 2014 (Saturday)
Time: 8pm
Venue: SCO Concert Hall
Ticket Price: $18 (exclude SISTIC fee)
Tickets from SISTIC
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