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Music from the Mind of a Chinese Maestro, Choo Hoey



I took advantage of the Keppel Nights tickets subsidy of 50% and took the family to attend the "Folklore and Legends" on February 20, at the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO)Concert Hall. It was conducted by Mr Choo Hoey (see photo) with a guest appearance of a young violinist, Mr Jin Li (see photo). I have never been inside the Singapore Conference Hall before, despite having lived in Singapore for the past thirteen years! It is located on Shenton Way, the financial street of Singapore, with a nice view onto the Marina Bay, which is seeing a lot of construction with new high rise office buildings springing up. Ah, this is Singapore, a land of little land but plenty of high rise buildings.

This is my first foray into a Chinese orchestra, with Chinese musical instruments. These names are strange to my ears - gaohu, erhu, banhu, zhonghu, yangqin, liuqin, zhongruan, sanxian, daruan, konghou, qudi, bangdi and xindi. Some of these instruments are not known to me, because I do not know the Chinese language, though I may have seen them many times. Yes, I have heard of guzheng and pipa. The western musical instruments of cello and double bass are well known.

I will leave it to you to seach the internet to recognize what these instruments look like, if you are like me, being ignorant of them. What hits me is the possibility to bring together traditional musical instruments, and with talented people, form an orchestra to make beautiful music for humanity.

Moving one step ahead, as we are in South East Asia, the Malay musical instrument, the gemelan and gong were used for the program, "Impressions of Malaysia". The conductor composed this piece from his visit to the long-house lodging of the Yiban tribe.

Then came the legend of Luhuitou, which took place in this beautiful village on Hainan island. Here the violinist gave us a memorable performance of this love story.

The insight of the event is we see things as they are such as the long-house in Malaysia or going beyond the sight, of creating music out of this sight? Creation can be the result of seeing to many as mundane things; but to the creator, it is the start of something never done before. This musical program is the result of the mind of this maestro, Choo Hoey who is now retired and resides in Europe.

My conclusion is the same; that we need to see beyond the obvious, into the heart of the sight. From the heart will come the insight of greater things that we can do for the betterment of humanity. I remember the lesson from the bible, that "seek and you shall find; ask and it shall be given; and knock, it will be opened." Simply put, explore into the unknown, for there lies greater treasures than you can ever dreamed of.

To know more about SCO: http://www.sco.com.sg/

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