Friday, April 03, 2009
One dude, three concerts, all awesome
Concert No.1 - Jason Mraz
Those who have known me long enough would know that I'm a major fan of Jason Mraz. No, not the kind who only know the words to I'm Yours and have never heard his amazing live songs like The Dream Life of Rand McNally. The very first time I heard The Remedy, he was performing on David Letterman's show back in 2002 to promote his first album. To celebrate my 18th birthday in Singapore, I went to HMV and treated myself to a copy (the last one nonetheless) of his Live at the Eagles Ballroom album. I soon came to the conclusion that Mraz's live performances are a billion orders of magnitude awesomer than his studio recordings, and thus began months of fruitless proselytising to fellow ASEAN Scholars who dismissed Mraz because John Mayer was cooler (yeah yeah, Mayer has a couple of Grammies, but so does "Weird Al" Yankovic). Peh.
Fast forward four years and one studio album later, the great man himself decided to have a concert Malaysia (finally, since he's been to Singapore already). Desmond, Darren and I made the trip almost a month ago, on the 4th of March.
Us lying down on the floor like a bunch of hobos
Met Philip and his date friend from MPAC, Anna. The last time I saw her she was a hooker*
Mraz was pure pwnage. For someone with a pretty laid back demeanor, he works the crowd damn well, with none of those usual "Are you guys having fun?! I can't hear you!" routines. His backup was also superb, including three guys on brass (as opposed to in bras... man that would be weird). Toca Riviera was also there to kick ass, too. We did spend some time arguing over whether the guy on stage was in fact Toca or not, though.
Photos courtesy of Yin, who was standing at a different part of the stadium
This too
We adjourned to Hartamas (to send Desmond home to Mont Kiara) where we mamak-ed and listened to R&B/hip hop music on MTV, but not before waiting 20 minutes for the inconsiderate assholes who parked in front of us but did not have the decency to, after the show, drive their cars away immediately. Bastards.
Nevertheless, I still slept happy that night, dreaming of robbing liquor stores in Singapore.
*At least she was acting as one. It was the MPAC end-year production, and she got murdered by the end of the play.
Concert No. 2 - Sarah Brightman
On a fateful Friday afternoon, just two days after the Mraz concert, I received an SMS from a fellow choirmate, Boon Dat. Apparently, somebody was looking for a backup Tenor for Sarah Brightman's upcoming concert. Problem: 1) the concert was to be held the next evening, and 2) I was already booked to emcee the Monash Orientation Bash to be held the following day, in Port Dickson.
I decided that I've got nothing to lose, so I might as well enquire more about it. Boon Dat gave me the contact person's, well, contact number. Turned out that it was Doreen Tang, of (I only found out later through Googling because I'm ulu like that) M! the Opera and Tunku - The Musical fame. So, over the phone I made my sales pitch, telling her about my experience in a choir, my work ethic (I have one okay, especially when it comes to performing), etc. And then she started saying things that made me lose confidence in securing the thing.
"The scores haven't arrived... I'll probably only get them much later tonight, after the crew touches down in Malaysia."
"Well obviously you need musical background, because we're working with professionals here."
"I had to ask Boon Dat for help because the people we usually use are busy tomorrow night."
In all honesty, the reason I've managed to fake my way through tough choir music for so long (e.g. Lord of the Rings Symphony) is because I spend a lot of time practicing and memorising the music with the help of a notation program to play out the notes for me. I know close to nothing about music. I take forever to read notes written on a bass clef. The only instrument I play is blowing my own trumpet (in both senses of the phrase...).
Needless to say, confidence gone, I decided that it'd be better for me not to embarass myself and the others on stage by doing a shitty job within the ranks of professionals. Despite Doreen telling me that she'll keep me in mind, I later texted her Tracy's contact (one of the conductors at choir) telling her that Tracy would know people who were much more experienced and musically-educated than me.
So I went back to eating my lunch.
Two hours later, Doreen called me again, telling me that after much deliberation she decided to give me a shot despite my complete lack of experience.
Whot. Da. Freek. Ing. Hell?
I probably said thank you a million times after that. A chance to sing with the legendary Sarah Brightman on stage! I was ecstatic. I was elated. I was exuberant. I was baby Godzilla stomping on his first sandcastle. Sandcastle being Rachel, to whom I have already promised to emcee the aforementioned thing at Port Dickson... This was too good an opportunity to pass up!*
For the rest of the day though, I think might have been pretty annoying to Doreen (if I really was, sorry!). Not wanting to be a liability to the rest of the team, when night came I texted her several times as to the status of the scores; my plan was to drive over to her place immediately after she gets the scores so I can do my own notation and practice like crazy before our combined rehearsal the next morning at 10.30.
Then problem after problem popped up. Doreen did not get to meet with the crew and collect the scores, so the 10.30am rehearsal at her place got cancelled. Hence, the first time I met the other singers (there were only six of us) was at 2.30pm at the KL Convention Centre, but even then we did not get the scores to the show.
Finally, at 4.30pm, we met the conductor for the concert, and we were given the scores... literally minutes before soundcheck. To exarcebate matters, some songs had backup vocal parts but no scores were given so we had to improvise. Thankfully, the conductor was considerate enough to understand that it was through no fault of our own that we were put in such a situation. You see, handling backup singers was a low priority on their list of things to do because in Sarah's Asia tour, only the Malaysia and Indonesia stops do not follow the "giant stadium, lots of costumes, lots of dancers, lots of props" format. The search for backup singers only occurred at the eleventh hour as a result (I also found out later that Doreen only received a phone call about the gig the day before I contacted her).
All the chaos aside, we did manage to pull through relatively unscathed. Not only that, we got to listen to the absolutely mindboggling vocals of Sarah Brightman from up on stage, too... Twice; once during rehearsal, and another time during the real thing. The last note she hits in The Phantom of the Opera gets me every time I hear it on recordings, but listening to the song live and less than ten metres away from her gave me goosebumps throughout.
The only proof I actually sang with Sarah Brightman. Of course we're not allowed to bring cameras onstage! Plus I didn't wanna embarrass everyone by asking for a photo with her...
L-R: Zalina, Me, Doreen, Vincent, Chi Mei, Wen Chin
It took me a few days for the fact to sink in, that I was a backup singer for Sarah Brightman. And why not? It was a completely surreal experience, thanks to the series of highly unlikely events taking their course. Somebody's gotta pinch me, and I have Doreen and Boon Dat to thank for it.
*It turned out that the opportunity cost of a once in a lifetime opportunity to perform with the great Ms. Brightman was the chance to mess around on a beach with a ton of freshmen, half of who were girls and a further quarter or so who frolicked around in bikinis.
Concert No. 3 - Buatan Malaysia
Let's start off with me apologising if I had been really pushy the past couple of weeks. We were trying really hard to push tickets as we were working with zero sponsorship for this production. Yeah, times are bad, but the performing arts industry probably got hit the worst. It's not like I get paid (not much anyway, usually just enough to pay for petrol) for doing these things.
Anyway, our debut concert as the Young Choral Academy Chamber Choir (what a mouthful) came and gone last weekend. We've only been practicing for three months, so it was a really rushed project. We definitely could've done better, but then again, we could've done much worse too; a mere week before the show there were still many loose ends to tie up. Fortunately, those loose ends got unfrayed and we made it through the weekend pretty well.
As I've mentioned before, the aim of Buatan Malaysia was to showcase the rich tapestry of our musical heritage, be it traditional music from Sabah, patriotic songs from the 60s, or popular music from P. Ramlee and Sheila Majid. However, I'd be wasting my breath trying to explain the music to those who didn't go, but suffice to say those who did can attest to how pleasantly surprised they were when they heard Malaysian music being sung that way (I'm looking at you, Izuan).
The crew, sans our director Melissa Teoh who was holding the camera
Our formation for One Thousand Million Smiles, originally sung by Sudirman at the Royal Albert Hall, London for the 1989 Asia Music Awards. He made the country proud by winning the whole damn thing
Jambatan Tamparuli, the aforementioned Sabahan song. We even messed around with traditional musical instruments
Melody, originally sung by Rynn Lim Yee Chong and featuring Sheila Majid, rearranged by longtime friend of YKLS, Ng Shyh Poh. That's me in the middle; this is the song where I have a rap solo
Including Melissa this time; three heads to my left and then one head down, that's her
All in all, Buatan Malaysia is certainly one of the more memorable concerts I've had the pleasure of performing in. Although we definitely could've polished our act more, this is one of those rare occasions where I actually like performing all the songs. If there's ever a plan to come up with a similarly-themed concert in the future, I'm definitely all up for it.
The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
No commentary today. Things have been pretty quiet over there recently... Or maybe I just haven't been following the news.
Pointless Fact of the Day:
For the past couple of days I've been sleeping pretty badly due to (overly) diligent monitoring of the American stock market, so I'm all out of gas for tonight. Anyway, I'll talk more about the blasted stock market in my next update (it begs ranting) but for now I really need my sleep. G'nite y'all.
Those who have known me long enough would know that I'm a major fan of Jason Mraz. No, not the kind who only know the words to I'm Yours and have never heard his amazing live songs like The Dream Life of Rand McNally. The very first time I heard The Remedy, he was performing on David Letterman's show back in 2002 to promote his first album. To celebrate my 18th birthday in Singapore, I went to HMV and treated myself to a copy (the last one nonetheless) of his Live at the Eagles Ballroom album. I soon came to the conclusion that Mraz's live performances are a billion orders of magnitude awesomer than his studio recordings, and thus began months of fruitless proselytising to fellow ASEAN Scholars who dismissed Mraz because John Mayer was cooler (yeah yeah, Mayer has a couple of Grammies, but so does "Weird Al" Yankovic). Peh.
Fast forward four years and one studio album later, the great man himself decided to have a concert Malaysia (finally, since he's been to Singapore already). Desmond, Darren and I made the trip almost a month ago, on the 4th of March.
Us lying down on the floor like a bunch of hobos
Met Philip and his Mraz was pure pwnage. For someone with a pretty laid back demeanor, he works the crowd damn well, with none of those usual "Are you guys having fun?! I can't hear you!" routines. His backup was also superb, including three guys on brass (as opposed to in bras... man that would be weird). Toca Riviera was also there to kick ass, too. We did spend some time arguing over whether the guy on stage was in fact Toca or not, though.
Photos courtesy of Yin, who was standing at a different part of the stadium
This tooWe adjourned to Hartamas (to send Desmond home to Mont Kiara) where we mamak-ed and listened to R&B/hip hop music on MTV, but not before waiting 20 minutes for the inconsiderate assholes who parked in front of us but did not have the decency to, after the show, drive their cars away immediately. Bastards.
Nevertheless, I still slept happy that night, dreaming of robbing liquor stores in Singapore.
*At least she was acting as one. It was the MPAC end-year production, and she got murdered by the end of the play.
Concert No. 2 - Sarah Brightman
On a fateful Friday afternoon, just two days after the Mraz concert, I received an SMS from a fellow choirmate, Boon Dat. Apparently, somebody was looking for a backup Tenor for Sarah Brightman's upcoming concert. Problem: 1) the concert was to be held the next evening, and 2) I was already booked to emcee the Monash Orientation Bash to be held the following day, in Port Dickson.
I decided that I've got nothing to lose, so I might as well enquire more about it. Boon Dat gave me the contact person's, well, contact number. Turned out that it was Doreen Tang, of (I only found out later through Googling because I'm ulu like that) M! the Opera and Tunku - The Musical fame. So, over the phone I made my sales pitch, telling her about my experience in a choir, my work ethic (I have one okay, especially when it comes to performing), etc. And then she started saying things that made me lose confidence in securing the thing.
"The scores haven't arrived... I'll probably only get them much later tonight, after the crew touches down in Malaysia."
"Well obviously you need musical background, because we're working with professionals here."
"I had to ask Boon Dat for help because the people we usually use are busy tomorrow night."
In all honesty, the reason I've managed to fake my way through tough choir music for so long (e.g. Lord of the Rings Symphony) is because I spend a lot of time practicing and memorising the music with the help of a notation program to play out the notes for me. I know close to nothing about music. I take forever to read notes written on a bass clef. The only instrument I play is blowing my own trumpet (in both senses of the phrase...).
Needless to say, confidence gone, I decided that it'd be better for me not to embarass myself and the others on stage by doing a shitty job within the ranks of professionals. Despite Doreen telling me that she'll keep me in mind, I later texted her Tracy's contact (one of the conductors at choir) telling her that Tracy would know people who were much more experienced and musically-educated than me.
So I went back to eating my lunch.
Two hours later, Doreen called me again, telling me that after much deliberation she decided to give me a shot despite my complete lack of experience.
Whot. Da. Freek. Ing. Hell?
I probably said thank you a million times after that. A chance to sing with the legendary Sarah Brightman on stage! I was ecstatic. I was elated. I was exuberant. I was baby Godzilla stomping on his first sandcastle. Sandcastle being Rachel, to whom I have already promised to emcee the aforementioned thing at Port Dickson... This was too good an opportunity to pass up!*
For the rest of the day though, I think might have been pretty annoying to Doreen (if I really was, sorry!). Not wanting to be a liability to the rest of the team, when night came I texted her several times as to the status of the scores; my plan was to drive over to her place immediately after she gets the scores so I can do my own notation and practice like crazy before our combined rehearsal the next morning at 10.30.
Then problem after problem popped up. Doreen did not get to meet with the crew and collect the scores, so the 10.30am rehearsal at her place got cancelled. Hence, the first time I met the other singers (there were only six of us) was at 2.30pm at the KL Convention Centre, but even then we did not get the scores to the show.
Finally, at 4.30pm, we met the conductor for the concert, and we were given the scores... literally minutes before soundcheck. To exarcebate matters, some songs had backup vocal parts but no scores were given so we had to improvise. Thankfully, the conductor was considerate enough to understand that it was through no fault of our own that we were put in such a situation. You see, handling backup singers was a low priority on their list of things to do because in Sarah's Asia tour, only the Malaysia and Indonesia stops do not follow the "giant stadium, lots of costumes, lots of dancers, lots of props" format. The search for backup singers only occurred at the eleventh hour as a result (I also found out later that Doreen only received a phone call about the gig the day before I contacted her).
All the chaos aside, we did manage to pull through relatively unscathed. Not only that, we got to listen to the absolutely mindboggling vocals of Sarah Brightman from up on stage, too... Twice; once during rehearsal, and another time during the real thing. The last note she hits in The Phantom of the Opera gets me every time I hear it on recordings, but listening to the song live and less than ten metres away from her gave me goosebumps throughout.
The only proof I actually sang with Sarah Brightman. Of course we're not allowed to bring cameras onstage! Plus I didn't wanna embarrass everyone by asking for a photo with her...L-R: Zalina, Me, Doreen, Vincent, Chi Mei, Wen Chin
It took me a few days for the fact to sink in, that I was a backup singer for Sarah Brightman. And why not? It was a completely surreal experience, thanks to the series of highly unlikely events taking their course. Somebody's gotta pinch me, and I have Doreen and Boon Dat to thank for it.
*It turned out that the opportunity cost of a once in a lifetime opportunity to perform with the great Ms. Brightman was the chance to mess around on a beach with a ton of freshmen, half of who were girls and a further quarter or so who frolicked around in bikinis.
Concert No. 3 - Buatan Malaysia
Let's start off with me apologising if I had been really pushy the past couple of weeks. We were trying really hard to push tickets as we were working with zero sponsorship for this production. Yeah, times are bad, but the performing arts industry probably got hit the worst. It's not like I get paid (not much anyway, usually just enough to pay for petrol) for doing these things.
Anyway, our debut concert as the Young Choral Academy Chamber Choir (what a mouthful) came and gone last weekend. We've only been practicing for three months, so it was a really rushed project. We definitely could've done better, but then again, we could've done much worse too; a mere week before the show there were still many loose ends to tie up. Fortunately, those loose ends got unfrayed and we made it through the weekend pretty well.
As I've mentioned before, the aim of Buatan Malaysia was to showcase the rich tapestry of our musical heritage, be it traditional music from Sabah, patriotic songs from the 60s, or popular music from P. Ramlee and Sheila Majid. However, I'd be wasting my breath trying to explain the music to those who didn't go, but suffice to say those who did can attest to how pleasantly surprised they were when they heard Malaysian music being sung that way (I'm looking at you, Izuan).
The crew, sans our director Melissa Teoh who was holding the camera
Our formation for One Thousand Million Smiles, originally sung by Sudirman at the Royal Albert Hall, London for the 1989 Asia Music Awards. He made the country proud by winning the whole damn thing
Jambatan Tamparuli, the aforementioned Sabahan song. We even messed around with traditional musical instruments
Melody, originally sung by Rynn Lim Yee Chong and featuring Sheila Majid, rearranged by longtime friend of YKLS, Ng Shyh Poh. That's me in the middle; this is the song where I have a rap solo
Including Melissa this time; three heads to my left and then one head down, that's herAll in all, Buatan Malaysia is certainly one of the more memorable concerts I've had the pleasure of performing in. Although we definitely could've polished our act more, this is one of those rare occasions where I actually like performing all the songs. If there's ever a plan to come up with a similarly-themed concert in the future, I'm definitely all up for it.
The Zimbabwe Dollar Watch:
No commentary today. Things have been pretty quiet over there recently... Or maybe I just haven't been following the news.
Pointless Fact of the Day:
For the past couple of days I've been sleeping pretty badly due to (overly) diligent monitoring of the American stock market, so I'm all out of gas for tonight. Anyway, I'll talk more about the blasted stock market in my next update (it begs ranting) but for now I really need my sleep. G'nite y'all.
