While Singapore mourned the loss of her founding father and first prime minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew the past week, the artistic community also mourns the loss of two giants in their own right, Nobel-winning Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer and British composer-pianist Ronald Stevenson. I never thought that I’d feel…
A burrow full of books
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Thus ends my year-long sojourn in the United Kingdom, where I’ve learnt to cook, met wonderful people I never hope to lose contact with, and had the time of my life, all while reading musicology and analysing 46 different recordings of the same piece (!!!) for a dissertation. It probably…
Contemplating coffee, change, and culinary concoctions..
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Today I met a man whose life revolved around coffee. He had set up a little stall in Handpicked Hall, a sort-of indoor flea market located in Leeds’ Grand Arcade. Overhead, a sign read “Casa Colombiana, for pure 100% Colombian coffee”. To his left was a big complicated machine with…
A religious procession, spinning wheels, and some thoughts.
0Had the twelfth piano lesson with my teacher today, and he still manages to throw me off-balance with the things he says. As we worked through Janáček’s ‘The Holy Virgin of Frydek’ from On an Overgrown Path, I asked how the middle section should be played. Although marked Un poco…
So this is Christmas..
0…spent away from my family, for the first time. A rather quiet Christmas, free from the present-shopping and wrapping; church rehearsals; and familial duties. I’d been dreading it since I heard the first christmas songs at the Kirkgate Market in October. As Bing Crosby’s voice crooned “I’ll be home for…
Sibelius Sunday..
0…it shall be called, 2nd December 2012 because of the amount of works by Sibelius performed in two different locations in Leeds. A friend from Manchester told me that his friend will be performing the Sibelius Violin Concerto at the Leeds College of Music, with the Leeds College of Music…
“…but Poulenc died almost 50 years ago!”
0.. was what my new piano teacher said, when I told him that the most modern piano music that I’ve played was Poulenc’s. Oops.. I finally had my first piano lesson yesterday, after playing “unsupervised” twice at Performance Class. The feeling of performing on the piano (and not having to…
Four dollars and ninety cents.
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Call it a sequel to this, if you may.. HMV CD sales are highly dangerous – I end up buying more CDs than I need, and some of them remain in their wrapper, unopened for a long, long time until I discover them in the recesses of my collection a…
A feeling of heimweh was evoked when a friend quoted me the following passage, Frisch weht der WindDer heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilst du? Ridiculous, because I am home in Singapore. Maybe it’s because I do miss wandering the streets, churches and museums of Deutschland though.. Of course, I doubt he…
In between the old and the new…
0It feels surreal, attending a 12-17th century vocal music concert last night, and knowing that the one later (L’arc~en~ciel) is going to be so different. With it being the first rock concert I’m attending, I have no idea of the concert etiquette i have to observe! Stand, shout, cheer? Clap…