Here is the long-delayed second chapter in this trilogy of mine. In Part I, I took a trip down memory lane back to my secondary school choir days. In this second chapter, I recount the time I spent with my junior college choir.
After the slightly harrowing experience of going through the auditions at the start of 1998, and anxiously waiting for the results, my friends and I clamoured round the choir board to see if we made it into the college choir. H and I let out a whoop of joy in seeing that we made it into the Tenor section. This signalled the start of my journey with the choir for the next two years.
Singapore Youth Festival Festival Choir
We had the benefit of excellent conductors and teachers-in-charge, and our conducters were always pushing the limits of choral music within Singapore and within the international scene. In my first year, I had already been on the Sing-phony Cruise as part of an international music exchange program, was selected to be in the Festival Choir as part of the Singapore Youth Festival combined choir, and we went round Singapore for our traditional Christmas carolling.
More pics of the 8 of us at SYF, with Prof Navarro
2 Tenors and 2 Basses
A typical week would include two rehearsals, one on Wednesday and another on Saturday, each rehearsal lasting around 3 hours or so. On top of that, we would have regular sectionals where the different sections would bash through the more complicated parts of our pieces. Some of these sessions were really draining, but I grew a lot as a singer, appreciating the lines in the songs we were singing and blending with the choir as a whole. With so much time spent together in rehearsals, our batch inevitably got really close and we all made lasting ties of friendship.
I was also very fortunate to get elected as vice-president, and then subsequently made co-president, of the choir. I had a fantastic batch of committee members and all of us learnt a lot from the choir madams, and from each other.
Choir tour in Helsinki
The highlight of my two years in the choir was the '99 Europe Tour. I was in my second and final year of college, and the choir embarked on a tour sometime in June, to participate in the Tampere Choral Festival in Helsinki, Finland.
All of us in our competition outfits
We flew straight to Helsinki, and would later on make a pitstop in London for a couple of days before flying back to Singapore. Our seniors had participated in this same choral competition a couple of years back, and had walked away with a single gold medal. The top gradings was triple gold, double gold, single gold, and then various other lower awards.
Our conductors had selected an array of distinctive Asian pieces for the competition. It wasn't just about competing at the choral festival, but ultimately, it was about sharing your music and culture with the other delegates there. We were all dressed in our traditional multi-cultural outfits, complete with headgear and bangles and jewellery.
We sang at the preliminary round before the panel of judges, and then we nervously waited for the results. The organisors would call back selected choirs to then sing on the stage in the evening, before a full audience, but the results would all be based on the judging during the preliminary round. These choirs need not necessarily be the top choirs at the preliminary round, but it was meant to display the range of styles and choirs present at the festival. Nonetheless, we were ecstatic when we found out that we were called back for the night performance!
This is what the concert hall looked like
From the picture above, you can actually see wooden panels by the side of the hall. These are actually movable, so that the acoustics of the hall can be changed and geared towards the different types of performances in the hall.
The one defining moment in our performance which is etched into my mind is in our piece 'Song Without Words'; all of us slide from a low note to the highest note possible, and at the end of the crescendo, all of us clap our hands together, and go silent. A lot of the girls were wearing bangles around their arms, and when all of us clapped, the bangles continued to reverbarate and the sound of the jingles floated across the entire hall.
The audience really appreciated all the choirs, and it was then time to announce the results from the the earlier preliminary round. Our choir's name was skipped for the gold award. Could we actually hope to do one better and get the double gold award? Or were we not good enough? Our choir's name was again skipped as they announced the winners of the double gold. They announced that only two choirs clinched the triple gold award. It couldn't be us could it?
They announced a choir's name, but it was a bit hard to make out the name with the Finnish announcer. It wasn't us. They then announced that the next choir had clinched the triple gold as well as being the Grand Prix winner, and was the top choir at the festival. Again, they announced a choir's name, and we couldn't quite catch the name. We suddenly saw one of our choir madams leap up into the air with excitement, and we then realised that it was us! They announced our choir's name! All of us just leapt up into the air, shrieking and hugging each other with joy and disbelief, tears streaming down some of our faces.
We had to somehow collect ourselves, blink back our tears and bring ourselves back on to stage to do an encore of our 'Song Without Words'.
I will always take with me the many wonderful memories of the choir, the madams, the pieces we sang and most of all, the friends I made during those two years.
After the slightly harrowing experience of going through the auditions at the start of 1998, and anxiously waiting for the results, my friends and I clamoured round the choir board to see if we made it into the college choir. H and I let out a whoop of joy in seeing that we made it into the Tenor section. This signalled the start of my journey with the choir for the next two years.
Singapore Youth Festival Festival Choir
We had the benefit of excellent conductors and teachers-in-charge, and our conducters were always pushing the limits of choral music within Singapore and within the international scene. In my first year, I had already been on the Sing-phony Cruise as part of an international music exchange program, was selected to be in the Festival Choir as part of the Singapore Youth Festival combined choir, and we went round Singapore for our traditional Christmas carolling.
More pics of the 8 of us at SYF, with Prof Navarro
2 Tenors and 2 Basses
A typical week would include two rehearsals, one on Wednesday and another on Saturday, each rehearsal lasting around 3 hours or so. On top of that, we would have regular sectionals where the different sections would bash through the more complicated parts of our pieces. Some of these sessions were really draining, but I grew a lot as a singer, appreciating the lines in the songs we were singing and blending with the choir as a whole. With so much time spent together in rehearsals, our batch inevitably got really close and we all made lasting ties of friendship.
I was also very fortunate to get elected as vice-president, and then subsequently made co-president, of the choir. I had a fantastic batch of committee members and all of us learnt a lot from the choir madams, and from each other.
Choir tour in Helsinki
The highlight of my two years in the choir was the '99 Europe Tour. I was in my second and final year of college, and the choir embarked on a tour sometime in June, to participate in the Tampere Choral Festival in Helsinki, Finland.
All of us in our competition outfits
We flew straight to Helsinki, and would later on make a pitstop in London for a couple of days before flying back to Singapore. Our seniors had participated in this same choral competition a couple of years back, and had walked away with a single gold medal. The top gradings was triple gold, double gold, single gold, and then various other lower awards.
Our conductors had selected an array of distinctive Asian pieces for the competition. It wasn't just about competing at the choral festival, but ultimately, it was about sharing your music and culture with the other delegates there. We were all dressed in our traditional multi-cultural outfits, complete with headgear and bangles and jewellery.
We sang at the preliminary round before the panel of judges, and then we nervously waited for the results. The organisors would call back selected choirs to then sing on the stage in the evening, before a full audience, but the results would all be based on the judging during the preliminary round. These choirs need not necessarily be the top choirs at the preliminary round, but it was meant to display the range of styles and choirs present at the festival. Nonetheless, we were ecstatic when we found out that we were called back for the night performance!
This is what the concert hall looked like
From the picture above, you can actually see wooden panels by the side of the hall. These are actually movable, so that the acoustics of the hall can be changed and geared towards the different types of performances in the hall.
The one defining moment in our performance which is etched into my mind is in our piece 'Song Without Words'; all of us slide from a low note to the highest note possible, and at the end of the crescendo, all of us clap our hands together, and go silent. A lot of the girls were wearing bangles around their arms, and when all of us clapped, the bangles continued to reverbarate and the sound of the jingles floated across the entire hall.
The audience really appreciated all the choirs, and it was then time to announce the results from the the earlier preliminary round. Our choir's name was skipped for the gold award. Could we actually hope to do one better and get the double gold award? Or were we not good enough? Our choir's name was again skipped as they announced the winners of the double gold. They announced that only two choirs clinched the triple gold award. It couldn't be us could it?
They announced a choir's name, but it was a bit hard to make out the name with the Finnish announcer. It wasn't us. They then announced that the next choir had clinched the triple gold as well as being the Grand Prix winner, and was the top choir at the festival. Again, they announced a choir's name, and we couldn't quite catch the name. We suddenly saw one of our choir madams leap up into the air with excitement, and we then realised that it was us! They announced our choir's name! All of us just leapt up into the air, shrieking and hugging each other with joy and disbelief, tears streaming down some of our faces.
We had to somehow collect ourselves, blink back our tears and bring ourselves back on to stage to do an encore of our 'Song Without Words'.
I will always take with me the many wonderful memories of the choir, the madams, the pieces we sang and most of all, the friends I made during those two years.
3 comments:
wah. the floppy hair-do. sure brings back memories!
Wow, this sure brings back memories - I'd even forgottent that I had short hair back when we were in the festival choir! Any chance I could get a copy of the SYF photos? :p
The Madams really did instil the same lessons into all of us - I will always remember learning about performing to share music, and giving everything when performing.
Hey enuwy! OK, not sure if you are going to check back on these comments, as this post is slightly old.
I'll be glad to pass you the SYF photos. Back then, we didn't have digital cameras (not widespread enough) so these were the scanned versions of my photos. Drop me an email addie, and I'll email them to you
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