Lightyears

There seems to be quite a lot of concerts coming up, and this time round it is Lee Hom’s Music-Man concert tour. The first stop would be at the Taipei Arena on 19th and 20th September 2008! It has been 2 years since his last tour, title “Heroes of the Earth” or something like that. Hopefully a date in Singapore would be announced soon, and hopefully it won’t be during the exam period!!

Latest Updates: The 19th September concert is sold-out within 2 hours according to the ticketing agency.

Also, the 2nd stop on the world tour is Shanghai, on 18th October.

His latest album will be released on 12 September.

For more information, visit www.wangleehom.com

Tanya wins 2 major awards (at least, from what I watched on TV) at the 19th Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan! She scored wins in Best Female Vocalist, as well as Best Album Producer. It must be an amazing win for her since her album “Goodbye and Hello” was a new beginning for her in many ways, like being her own album producer, moving to Taipei etc. For the second time, she won Best Female Vocalist (she got this back in 2006 if I remember correctly). Even though I am rather unhappy that my favourite singer (A*Mei) did not win (again) this time round, I am still glad that Tanya won this award.

On another note, Karen Mok won best album, and I think it really means a lot for her since it was really an album she wanted to put out; she wrote songs, decided the direction and stuff. I probably will get her album in the next week, or probably tomorrow. I thought Tanya was going to win Best Album as well, since she was awarded best female vocalist and best album producer. Probably something went wrong with the jury?

On yet another note, Jay Chou sort of swept most of the awards he was nominated for, including awards for non-vocal recordings. As much as I do not like him, his character that is, I still admire him as a musician. Ok moving on, I feel a bit sad that Stefanie Sun (Yanzi) did not win any awards this year. Her album was great too, maybe concept wise it wasn’t as strong as Karen’s. And A*mei did not win any awards again! I cannot believe it… … no comments on that… …

Anyway, A*mei performed on the show, which I conveniently missed because of the waiting for my milkshake at Carl’s Junior. How slow can the service get? I mean if you are understaffed, go get more people…

Elva is back with Virgin Music! She never should have left anyway, since she was really well treated over there. Anyway, I was really looking forward to hearing her new music, until when I finally heard it…

As much as I do not want to compare her current album to her previous Virgin Music albums, I am pretty much forced into doing so. Firstly, her vocals are not as strong, in the sense that she glides through some notes, and quite a bit of lazy singing here and there. It was really obvious on her first (and final) album with Warner Music, “1087″. She probably needs better producers…

Ballads used to be one of her strengths, but recently they prove to be one of her weaknesses. Even with rather good songs like “Chong Dong”, “Shi Guang Sui Dao”, “Zhi Hou” and “Ni Kan Bu Jian De Di Fang”, she doesn’t really shine. She needs to be more sensitive to the lyrics and song I think.

On the other hand, the quick tempo songs sound much better. The first single off her album, “I’ll Be There” is one of the better tracks on the album, and is paired with a great mv. The oriental-infused urban track of “Baby Girl” is also not bad. Same for “More More More”.

Overall, I think Elva needs to do some work on her vocals. Song choice is rather ok for this album, what it lacks is the vocalist she used to be.

3 out of 5

I’ll Be There:

Chong Dong:

 More More More:

Liang Ge Ren De Ji Mo:

It’s been some time since I watched concerts of Chinese music. It was really great to hear traditional Chinese music once again, especially when I used to play the Suona myself.

The recital was a relatively short one, but it showcased the versatility of the suona. The soloist, Meng Jie, is a musician with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. There were traditional as well as modern pieces played in the concert, which I think was really appropriate, given the misconception people have with Chinese music. The performance began with a traditional piece titled “Celebrations” which was a great piece to start.

The following 2 pieces were rather modern, and were written by Meng Jie’s teacher, Zuo Ji Cheng. The first of the 2 pieces, “Rustic Morning Tunes” sounded rather nice and mellow, while the latter I thought was a bit cheesy, probably because of the music that was played on the MIDI file. Didn’t really like the composition I think…

The fourth piece “Family Portrait” I sort of forgot how it sounds like so moving on… A modern arrangement of a traditional piece I assume, cos it is also played with an MIDI file as an accompaniment. It started off rather ok, until rather cheesy music came in again. I hope I am not badmouthing about Chinese music, but I didn’t really like the tunes that were played on te MIDI file…

After which, “Polka”, a Polish dance, was played. It was a fun and entertaining song, which was played very well on the alto-levered suona, sort of like a clarinet. The evening’s performance ended with a suona classic “A Flock of Birds”. It was an amazing performance by Meng Xi in my opinion, with a bit of flaws nonetheless.

Overall, I think Meng Xi is a rather charming and talented performer, but probably needs to work on certain stuff, like the decrescendos and smorzandos because the sound sort of disappears too quickly. It was a great performance nonetheless, for someone who has never done a “solo” performance!