Flippin’ Singapore…

So I got back from Singapore 2 days ago and I can quite safely say that I’ve recovered. Yay! I took a pathetic amount of photos thanks to the mixture of my laziness and busy-ness, so these photos you see her are really all I took of Singapore.

The performance was held at the Esplanade’s outdoor theatre and that’s all of us with the crew (above) setting up for our sound check on the first day. Rehearsals and sound checks were held on a daily basis and were very weird; because we were in an open area, we had lots of passer bys popping by to listen and watch. When we were rehearsing pieces and were taking orders from Susan (our musical director), it was even weirder – we had people taking pictures of us; some even clapped mid way through the songs!

Performances were thankfully held in the evenings (the days were really hot). We played eight sets of songs in 30 minute durations over the next 3 days. It was awesome. We had a good reception, very friendly responses and were stoked to say the least. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be back in Singapore in the near future. Watch this space!

Update…

No, I’m not dead. Yet. Haha.

Have been rather caught up with work, both uni and teaching. Plus, am also preparing for a big gamelan show in Singapore at the end of May (will keep you posted!).

Speaking of gamelan, the girls and I have a blog! We just birthed it so go read:

http://rhythminbronze.wordpress.com/

Come say hi!

Bling bling…

And there you have it, I’m back from Kedah!

It was a 3 day affair filled with unlimited bling, yellow (the colour of Malaysian royalty), pomp and circumstance. The banquet hall we performed at turned out to be (for me at least) the stuff you only see on TVs, where the who’s who of society showcased their diamonds and rubbed shoulders with VIPs/VVIPs.

The performance of Susan’s piece itself went very well even though the production crew somehow managed to screw up the lighting onstage. Basically, we were playing in a terrible red light, making us all look like hell’s children (according to our dear Susan).The solo singer, Yasmin, apparently looked like the ‘mother of hell’.

Nice.

The highlight of this trip, however, was the company. As most of the gamelan girls could not commit to this project, we brought in other musicians to help us out – and what a blessing they turned out to be! Over the 3 days I have not laughed so hard and so much – so much so that I forgot I ever had to return to work.

20 crazy people (read: musicians) on a bus to Kedah over 3 days – definitely the way to live. It was like Little Miss Sunshine 20x the fun.

That’s us in our crowning glory. Left to right: Yours truly, Susan, Jill, Sharm.

We had to wait a while to be photograph (read: shameless photo hogs before us) but it was definitely a necessary thing to do.

Perhaps it would be too sentimental and sappy for me to write this but:

I wonder what I did to deserve all this.

Who would have thought, from a simple dream to make gamelan a part of my soul!