Singapore Strings

"Stop me if you've heard this one: a Korean, an American, and a German are on a plane..."

Last week, two string students and I flew to Singapore for the AMIS Honor Orchestra festival. The festival is organized by an association dedicated solely for the promotion of music in the international schools, and is essentially our version of an all-state ensemble, if you imagine the world as a state, and each country as a city or district. I was mildy bummed to be going to an orchestra event instead of a band event, as I'm not a "string guy", but the trip was marvelous and educational all the same...

Here is a blurry photo of the circumnavigational and indirect route our plane took to Bangkok en route to Singapore. Luckily, nobody with surface-to-air missiles lives in the Red Sea.

Now, I think the food on long-haul foreign flights is great (basically all variations on chicken with rice and vegetables. What's not to like?) However, if you haven't seen it yet, check out this extraordinary and funny complaint letter to Richard Branson of Virgin Air from a customer who didn't like his in-flight meal. Branson recently offered the author a job as a food tester for subsequent menus on the airline.

The terminal in the Bangkok airport feels as long as the span of the 520 bridge and has kingly and gloriously excessive stores. Here is a bottle of special-edition Johnnie Walker Blue Label (normally $700-$800 USD a regular bottle) that is bigger than my chest cavity:


Here is a Bangkok terminal sculpture display. Click to enlarge:



Once in Singapore, we were met at the airport by school staff and I took a taxi to a local hotel while my students were homestayed near the school. The next morning we had an opening ceremony at Singapore American School where we saw a traditional "Lion Dance", rife with comedy and jarring percussion (The "lions" are fed plates of lettuce and oranges, only to disgorge them violently and messily to the lion wrangler. They also wander around the audience causing havoc.


This lion produces a scroll from its mouth... (reminds me of that great Onion headline: "Fountain Simulates Vomiting Lion")


Which was then given to our guest conductors for the Festival, Mr. Lorraine Davis and Mr. Philip Green, both of whom were really great educators:


Afterward, we heard a performance by the T'ang Quartet, the hippest string quartet this side of Kronos. They played Beethoven, Haydn, and Fritz Kreisler, and had extraordinary communication (I later found out the cellist and violist were brothers.) Watching them count and look at one another for cues was a great lesson in musicianship. Here, the cellist MCs the event:


Singapore American School has about 3,800 students K-12, which is about five or six times as many as my school in Israel. Their campus is an enormous fortress divided into three sections, one for each school, including a wonderful performing arts center with two theaters. Here is a shot of our kids at the entrance with three teachers in the foreground (one from Mexico City, one from Tokyo, one from Kuala Lumpur):

The students rehearsed all day while we performed chaperoning duties and attended workshops, one of which was a talk by the T'ang cellist. He talked about the difficulties of being a professional string quartet in the East -- London would like to have you, but airfare is 6000 British pounds, and they have plenty of string players in England right down the street. China likes soloists, not quartets, and usually wants a Caucasian soloist anyway. However, they have been together for 10 years and are getting gigs without being bonded to the Singapore orchestra (which is an 8-year commitment) and are getting to play many 20th-century composers and new works, which they love to sink their teeth into.

After a day of rehearsing and chaperoning, we all take off to the Night Safari -- a kind of nocturnal wildlife preserve including lions, tapirs (amazing), giraffes, elephants, bats (I felt them whizzing by my face) leopards, and other extraordinary species. I didn't get pictures because flashes were forbidden, and it was night, and all my pictures look like they were taken by a crackpot trying to prove the existence of aliens in his backyard.

However, there was one thing I could photograph that was something I never heard of -- for 10 Singapore dollars (about $6.50 USD) you could submerge your feet in an aquarium for five minutes and there were little fish who would swarm around you and gently eat the dead skin off of your feet. It was amazing. It felt like electricity. I'm sorry I only got five minutes. Here I am in mid-soak:


There were some Singaporean fire-breathers and acrobats also.


This is the SAS middle school band room. They have a window with a view and a projector for the front. I got to talk with the band directors at length and observe some classes, which might have been the most valuable part of the trip for me. I keep forgetting how much I miss networking and sharing ideas.

The next day, another performance: this time by the abnormally brilliant Jack Glatzer, who performed the demonically complex caprices of Paganini. This was playing the likes of which I had never heard before -- during one piece ("The Hunt") he made the violin sound realistically like hunting horns and flutes by using sophisticated harmonics and bowing techniques. His virtuosity was so stunning that I felt the same combination of feelings as when I saw the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics: disbelief and awe, with a pinch of envy and anger that someone would spend so much time learning to do one thing flawlessly. And it was fantastic. Here is Glazer with a slide show of Paganini behind him:


After the Paganini concert, the students went back to rehearsal, while I got to realize a lifelong dream: playing Javanese gamelan. SAS has a complete gamelan set made by a master and installed in a complex ceremony. Here are a few photos of the various gongs, drums, xylophones and metallophones that comprise the set:


And here is a westernized diagram of Gamelan notation (in Java, it is taught entirely through individual instruction of rote repetition.) It's both more and less complex than it first appears; each number and color combination refers to a different instrument in the ensemble:


Singapore is an immaculate, island microstate on the southern tip of Malaysia. It has all kinds of cultural influences, some of which can be readily seen in the landscape, which is flat and verdant. It lies almost exactly on the equator, so the weather is always fairly hot and humid. Here is the view from my hotel room -- rare small row houses surrounded by huge high-density housing structures and offices:



How hip is this(?):


Here's a good example of the density and scope of Singaporean housing. If you're familiar with the UW campus, imagine McMahon hall writ large and a little more visually pleasing and you're pretty close. I think this one is small- to medium-sized by Singapore standards:


Here's a little more of a colonial flavor to a house not far from the school:


The final rehearsal with the combined Junior and Senior orchestras. Here is a sea of bass scrolls:


Mr. Green schools the cellos:

Everyone, as seen from the balcony. The synchronized bow movement from a sea of string instruments makes it look like a living organism -- much more fun to watch visually than a wind band.

No students allowed:

The teachers from International School in Zurich try three different flavors of Corn Nuts. I tell them that you can find these at any gas station display counter in the continental United States.

Warming up outside, shortly before a tropical rain.

The theater lobby at SAS has enormous vertical windows that can be opened to the elements:

My students and I, after the concert:

And finally, after the concert, drinking Singapore Slings on Orchard Road. Clockwise from left:

Lorraine, American School in London (originally from Virginia)
Your Narrator
Hanrich, Shanghai American School (originally from South Africa)
Anna, American School in London (originally from Finland)
Melica, Zurich Internaional School (originally from Serbia)
Jeffrey, JFK school Berlin (originally from Tennessee, taking the picture)