Tuesday, March 09, 2004

SAF Bands 10th Anniversary Concert - 5th March 2004 - Esplanade Theatres on the Bay

The Singapore Armed Forces Bands 10th Anniversary Concert was held last week at the Esplanade Concert Hall. It was the first time that I’m playing with a band at that venue. The hall is extremely projective, a whole new experience I must say.

Seriously speaking, although I had a lot of people telling them it was a good concert, I thought it wasn’t very well done. I would perhaps give a rating of 6.5/10 for the concert.

Light Calvary Overture
I thought this piece was quite well done, although the starting wasn’t really that stable. The band took up to the allegro section to stabilise. Other than that, the rest of the piece was good, energetic as it should be.

Concierto de Aranjuez
Katryna did a very good job! I always find her playing very enchanting even in rehearsals. She just have this flair around her. The accompaniment wasn’t very good, sad to say. I thought the arrangement was sometimes too thin in texture, and that the ensemble lack practice. The third movement at some point sounded like we were sightreading. The intonation wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely much better at some points during the concert.

Star Wars Trilogy
Something funny happened to me before it started. I had to give the tuning Bb and A to retune the band before the piece starts. Instead of the Bb, an A came out! I was like: huh! Took me a while to realise the mechanism wasn’t locking to raise the Bb key. Heng ah! I wouldn’t know what to do if my oboe die on me 1 minute before a piece.

Anyway, the piece was quite ok. I couldn’t really find any fault with it. Interesting thing to note, both Teow and I had this accidental “grace” note in our solos. Haha! Generally, the band sounded tired and some of my friends in the band agreed that the playing during the sound check was much better.

~interval~

I met 3 friends for the first time, all of them whom I got to know online. It’s always great to see new friends at concert, somehow it’s like a meeting ground for new friends. Saw a couple of other friends too, great to see familiar faces too!

March
Well played by the band. I don’t know why CPT Lee seems to have so much supporters in the audience. He seems to be the only conductor greeted with cheers when he came on stage. Interesting.

In the Miller Mood
This is a jazzy piece that I quite like. Although the concert is now over, I still would have prefer to perform it without all the fanciful standing, etc.

Belkis, Regina di Saba
As the showcase piece for the concert, I think this is one of the best played by the band. Nice solos by all soloists. I think the offstage brasses caught a lot of people in the audience by surprise at the last movement when the band suddenly went into “surround sound” mode. It sounded really loud on stage, with everyone around the hall playing away at fortissimo!

The next 2 pieces for solo trumpet and bugle was actually intended as encore, somehow they were added into the main repertoire for the night.

Personally, I think I must have set a new personal record for the mot number of mistake made in one concert! My lips were really tired from all the endless practices we had prior to the concert. Didn’t really destroyed any solo, thankfully. There was an additional grace note in my Stars Wars solo though, not very noticeable I hope! I was quite low profile for this concert anyway, didn’t have any outstanding, limelight solos to do, but! I have to stay on stage for the entire concert, one of the most tiring in recent time I guess. It’s always a bad idea to have 6 hours full band practices on the concert week. It just tires everyone out. My friend told me they have a 3 hours practice on the concert day. Really don’t know how they do it man! *kow tow to them*.

Conclusion:
I think if I was a paying concert-goer, I wouldn’t had regret going. The concert was still reasonably “listenable”, as my brother told me: the pieces were easy on the ears, not those sleep inducing pieces. I hope all those who I had asked to attend the concert enjoyed it.
fjozn at 11:27 AM