Winter Solstice

THE SYC ENSEMBLE SINGERS AND MUSICAL RENEWAL

The bane of contemporary composers has always been performers who are incapable of fathoming and conveying the underlying dramatic flow of their music, or even unmotivated to do so. Whenever a concert programme combines traditional and new music, performers would often spend hours carefully honing each phrase of a Tchaikovsky symphony or refining the subtlest rubato in a Beethoven trio, leaving only the remaining few minutes to muddle through the token contemporary work in the programme.  

Through such indifference, deeply urgent and vibrant musical expressions wrought into notated scores through sleepless agony become pulverized into nonsensical fragments. Prejudice towards New Music is not a modern phenomenon. Even revered composers like Brahms faced disastrous premieres of their works due to unsympathetic performances. 

To complicate matters, in the more permissive artistic environment of the modern and post-modern era, it has become easy for those professing to be composers to pass off garbled concoctions as real music, and hard for all but the most discerning to hear through the farce. Between the indifferent performer and the charlatan, there is little wonder why modern works have accrued a forbidding reputation for bewilderment! 

In such an inhospitable climate, the Singapore Youth Choir has been an oasis for living composers yearning for their true voices to be heard. The SYC has garnered a much deserved reputation for approaching each new work as it would a classic. The singers probe deep to grasp the inner impetus and spark of reason that makes each work come alive, move hearts and speak to audiences. Every time I hear the SYC perform a choral work of mine, I am struck by how painstakingly each line is shaped, each dynamic adjusted, each rhythm timed and each texture trimmed in perfect sympathy and telepathy with what I had originally intended the music to utter, and beyond!  With the heart and mind of a composer herself, conductor Jennifer Tham magically completes the compositional process by creatively realizing the score in a way that builds congruently upon the composers' intent. For all the disappointments I have faced as a composer, it is such sublime moments that make the arduous journey worth it. 

With a policy of relentless commissioning new works, the SYC is forging the choral classics of tomorrow. In the year of its 40th anniversary, we celebrate the SYC's commitment to musical excellence, innovation and their unmatched ability to catch and release the Beautiful within a simple collection of notes. May they blossom for another 40 years!

- Kelly Tang