Artsylum Quartet

The Singaporean String Quartet

2011-09-01T14:41:00.000+08:00

Artsylum Quartet and Oxley Quartet with
Sanche Jagatheesan, Jun Zubillaga-Pow and Daniel Chiang

Lee Yuk Chuan – Lingzhi Capriccio (1973)
Kelly Tang – String Quartet (1990)
Phoon Yew Tien – String Quartet (1980)
Jun Zubillaga-Pow – Weird Witches (2011)
Jeremiah Li Kai Han – Three Korean Scenes (2006)
Benjamin Lim Yi – Porcelain Harlequin / Through the Glass / Threshold (2007-10)
Leong Yoon Pin – Largo and Vivace (1982)

Two young string quartets join forces to perform an entire programme of contemporary classics composed by Singaporeans. Come enjoy the nation’s finest chamber music written since independence. Composers to be featured include Leong Yoon Pin, Phoon Yew Tien, Lee Yuk Chuan, Kelly Tang, Jeremiah Li and Benjamin Lim Yi.

What goes on after rehearsals (Indian Food.)

2011-05-31T12:02:00.001+08:00

2230 hrs, somewhere beside Kent Ridge Bus Interchange.

The guys order and the girls take photos!

Butter, Cheese, Garlic Naan

Gobi Manchurian

(cauliflower fritters?)

Butter Chicken

Chocolate milkshake

Avocado milkshake

Durian milkshake

Highly fattening, but also very good!

What goes on in Arensky rehearsals

2011-05-27T22:36:00.002+08:00

To hear better...

1st experiment sitting with backs to each other.

Fashion accessory

So that we all can hear the metronome in this odd seating arrangement, it was clipped to the violist's vest.

Fashion statement

Guess whose cool shoes these are?!

A Russian Romance@ Red Sea Gallery

2011-05-21T22:53:00.000+08:00

On top of a hill, with its winding roads, sprawling houses, the occasional overgrown field, but nonetheless wearing an intimidatingly cool vibe a.k.a. Dempsey, sat an art gallery. Cool concrete floors, cool white-black alternating walls, very resonant space.

"A Solo exhibition by Russian sensation Anna Berezovskaya"

Exhibition runs until 19th June 2011.

Since our blog post is rather current for once, catch it while you can!

(Not a paid advertisement.)

The gathering of the well-heeled.

Snapshots of the humans taking a break from sitting...

(Guess who's back from cold Colorado?)

...while the instruments sprawl conveniently on the couch nearby.

Christoven the Violist's latest bling find from Stevie General Store at Club Street,

(Not a paid advertisement either.)

nonchalantly modeled by DT the violinist.

And now for our post-gig food feature!

Shokudo@Raffles City

(Still not a paid advertisment.)

Mango Slush Ice with Rum and Raisin ice cream

Rosti a.k.a. French fry noodles as described by the violist.

On skewers: Mushroom(s) and Prawn(s) snuggled in bacon blanket.

And when all the food's finally gone...

Cool Classics@Esplanade Concourse

2011-03-07T22:08:00.000+08:00

*Long overdue post, backdated to conceal the embarrassing lateness of it. (what's new?) Photos courtesy of Michelle who kindly programmed us amidst the March madness.

Little black rectangle of a photo in a poster within a poster = very meta.

The Violist wonders what the Cellist finds funny during the 2nd Violin's introduction.

Finally getting down to the playing,

with the serious teacher face,

"I am viola hear me roar"

wandering eyes wondering

All smiles after the serious second movement of Shostakovich F Major Quartet.

The big picture, behind the audience's back.

The Story Continues 5-6 Jan

2011-01-18T17:37:00.000+08:00

First performance with Odyssey Dance Theatre at Drama Center!

The cavernous dressing room

The requisite dressing room label

Also, a room with a view

of some of our audience leaving in a rather orderly fashion.

Oxy checking out Christoven's new spectacles! (one of many...)

Speaking of gold boots, check out the matching golden fan accessory around his neck.

Kent from the Hair Times

doing Jit's hair

Kent's other work...

Really nailed the glam bride look!

L to R: Jit, Liz, Oxy, Kit Yeng (arranger/pianist) and Christoven

Our eyes are all looking at different places because there were too many cameras.

Ok maybe just two.

Jit with the 2 Korean dancers and LayTeng

much to the envy of the schoolgirls standing around

Final group shot!

2010 that passed too fast

2011-01-18T16:58:00.001+08:00

Telok Ayer Performing Arts Center

Our new rehearsal space. Enjoying it while it lasts - apparently it's going to be gone in a few years!

Latest addition (or edition) - Golden boots of Christoven the violist

parked on the tiramisu-esque carpet of a St Regis function room

Latest addition: the White Case of Jitmin

in the concave space of a St Regis restaurant. Our first wedding performance as a 'new' quartet!

On Wenlock Edge

2010-08-11T20:15:00.000+08:00

Backstage at the Arts House with the huge mirror.

Violist's last performance in Singapore is over and he is fiddling with his laptop.

Totally sad that it's just us in Singapore now...

(But trust the camera to bring out the smilezzzz..)

2nd from left: Edward the first violinist for the night

2nd from right: Rachel the pianist

Oxy was actually wearing something bright pink but she cleverly covered it in black to blend in.

The remnant of the quartet in what remained of the night.

(which was still pretty bright, courtesy of the Arts House's nice lights)

Us and David Charles Tay on the far right, one man out of 2 men of the really hot night.

the last moments of our first violinist

2010-08-11T18:33:00.000+08:00

"Whoa today is my last day in Singapore...=s. Even my T-shirt is happier than me."

"Don't worry food will make you feel a lot better!"

"Erm isn't this supposed to have pasta in it? Why is it a swimming mess of gravy?"

(Oops. Apparently there is a new chef at tcc@Funan and so he forgot to put in the penne.)

It was sent back to the kitchen and returned like this. Considerably less grey sauce and very visible pasta, but still iffy looking nonetheless.

But then again who cares about food when you have great friends for company! *ahem*

(DT you will be missed! )

Oxy's wedding

2010-07-24T18:18:00.004+08:00

Ahh the second violinist finally weds Dr Jonathan Cheah our unofficial quartet photographer.
(Second from right: Selwyn Koh, our 2nd violinist for the day)

We play...

and then we eat (and drink coffee and pose)

53a recording

2010-06-25T18:46:00.000+08:00

(Photo courtesy of Don Richmond and his iPhone)

Theremin-ising

2010-06-10T18:06:00.009+08:00


Spot us!


In rehearsal - the violist and cellist unconsciously posing in the same way...


The actual thing


Audience Participation. Cellist looks shellshocked at something.

The panoramic view

We are collectively captivated by something

Couldn't resist fooling around with the cute handsewn flipside cushions. On the far left is Xinyu the artiste liason!

A very kind soul bought us a lot of these...

But we still needed our post-show grub!

Photoshoot for Wish

2009-12-04T20:09:00.000+08:00

First day - at Portsdown Road

Prepping

The stealth unofficial photographer

The gurrrls

Accidentally walked into oncoming traffic

(sinking slowly into the mud)

We had to climb up a steep grassy slope to end up on higher (muddy) ground

Ah the bliss of standing on concrete instead of mud

Inside Klee@ Portsdown

End of shoot = zany-ness!

Outfits sponsored by Wish, many thanks to Angelina Leong.

Check out their great range of female apparel!

Date with Friends

2009-11-08T20:27:00.000+08:00

The title can also read - "Indecision", or "Jiapalang" (i.e. anything goes)

But she still takes it very seriously

And her, even more seriously.

His notes (and sombre dark blue shirt that is very nice but hasn't been featured since) make him look serious but he is seriously not.

Ok enough with the seriousness, seriously!

Ahh yes. They finally agree to smile when confronted with cute kids.

Octoburst! 2009

2009-10-14T00:20:00.000+08:00

This time we will dispense with the usual shots of the quartet playing and focus on the stars of Octoburst, the children in the audience! The Saturday audience had children with exploratory fingers.

Korean kids egged on by parents

Oxy demonstrating Twinkle on the violin

"I wanna touch"

After the violin, then the cello. Its size can occasionally be intimidating, but not to this spunky one!

AND...

Our 'rapturous' audience

Facing his back to the first violin (and the stage) looking totally bored.

Eating

Either lunch or a post-lunch munchie. We were playing at 1 15pm - a rather challenging time to young stomachs, and ours too.

Ah! Finally, some signs of attention.

(But we don't really know what they are looking at, do we?)

And the violist exclaims, "Why the tongue-in-cheek post?! What if the readers think no one listens to our music?!"

And the girls say, "Relax yeah, no one died with a bit of messing around".

The conventional shots are here.

The audience with the occasional wanderer.

The $64, 000 question is: Does size matter?

Doing a live comparison of the different sizes of the violin and viola.

"Yay! It's finally over! Now I can go and eat!"

Photo stories I

2009-09-25T11:21:00.000+08:00

The thing with Facebook is that most of our photos are on it, and blogging seems almost extraneous. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how does writing a bit here 'value-add' to our identity?

(The writer really abhors the 'value add' word but it serves it's function)

I guess for those without a Facebook account, this works. For those who can't login to Facebook during work hours, this works too. Not that we're encouraging on-the-job skiving, of course.

On to the topic of today's post...

We have taken a lot of our photos in our 4 year quartet life. Some nicer than others, where there are no half-shut eyes or wan smiles. However for the longest time, each time someone asked for a photo, we couldn't find a decent groupshot, something that we liked, wasn't too sombre or tired looking or insane.

So we got down to doing a 'photoshoot'.

Behind the camera was Jon Cheah, our most faithful photographer. It involved only one outfit change, thankfully, and was done in frantic snatches between sets at esplanade concourse. And again, after we had finished for the night.

on the prickly grass at esplanade's roof garden
The sun was up and Violist could barely keep his eyes open so there were many discarded shots.

Us in our element

Feigned or genuine sleepiness? After all the smiling, not smiling is nice and comfortable. In one corner our minder was surfing the net and waiting very patiently for us to be done so she could lock up and return the keys.

Of course, we took more pictures than these, but we're letting them out in trickles...

Jack and Angelina's Wedding

2009-09-11T11:41:00.000+08:00

Shanghai-themed, @ Marriott Hotel

The girls being all camera-happy.
After about 4 years of being surrounded by cameras of all sizes - in particular one long bazooka-like lens - all camera-shyness (if it even existed) has been dispelled.

Sneaking a picture of the bride and groom!
(Who is the industrious person with the tabbed scores?)

the awesome-ness that is
our personalised placards at the table!
Violist, being The Guy has a different colour.
Many thanks to Angelina for this. Violist went crazy and took countless pictures.

Group photo with 月亮代表我的心 mates
From left: Jack, Jem, DT, Liz, Oxy, Rai, and Alvin from 53A

emo shots

2009-03-26T20:58:00.000+08:00

(More photos of the shoot, courtesy of cheahwk!)

"even the picture book is more entertaining than waiting"

"nothing to do, might as well mess around"

"ten thousand things to do in the morning"

"tick tock time drips away from the holidays"

guess who?

the unsuspecting soul didn't hear the clicks from the bazooka lens in the distance

"supper or sleep?"

"definitely sleep"

tanguedia filming

2009-03-26T17:00:00.000+08:00

Hello! to all new and return visitors to our blog. It has remained dormant for many months now because the quartet has been busy with work/school, and has not had much time for quartet-related activities. However, we are pleased to present you with photos of our music video shoot of Tanguedia III (composed by Piazzolla), courtesy of some nice final year students at Nanyang Technological University who wanted to incorporate us playing this piece in their video project.

First person to endure the lights and endless waiting,
the male violist was brave in volunteering to go first. (But mostly because being a guy, he had less hassles with makeup.)

Not bored yet,
the second violin practices while the cellist was blinded into inaction by the glare.
(There are always good excuses for slacking.)

First violin basks
in the bright light, though by that time the night was deep and sleep was not far from our minds.

And after the long shots were done,

there was still the super closeups to go.

What's the point
of putting on makeup if we don't take pictures? the more the merrier although someone has a tired smile.

Wrap!
Thus endeth the two day long shoot.

(Photos were taken with the 1stviolin's pink camera. There are a lot of other photos floating Out There, some taken by the viola some taken by 2ndviolin and half, and others taken by the production team. Those who have nice photos and are feeling generous, please donate to a worthy cause and email them to artsylum.quartet@gmail.com - these will make their way to our blog shortly and will be duly credited.)

Behind-the-scenes of Octoburst

2008-10-04T16:22:00.000+08:00

One of the unintended effects of blogs is that they encourage a certain amount of voyeurism. It breeds the irresistable urge to find out the random details in the blogger's life. And so, this post is all about the behind-the-scenes of Octoburst.

In the dressing room.

"What are you doing?"
"None of your business go away."
(The above conversation is fictitious.)

A reprise of the evil eye.
'Evil eye' [def.] - death stare; glare; eyes narrowed into slits. Most often used during rehearsal, against those who are out of tune and out of sync. It's predominant effect is to strike fear and trembling into said offender. However, some have developed immunity to the evil eye, by looking only at the score and ignoring everyone else.

Yes, this is the esplanade dressing room and not some Seventh Month getai backstage.

Practicing to the exclusion of everyone else.

"The females are fascinating indeed. I wonder if anyone notices me spying on them..."

And the aftermath - FOOD!

Sashimi salad@ichiban boshi

Mushroom curry rice!

Ribs@ Changing Appetites

There are a lot more food photos, especially since there were two post-performance dinners, but all this talk about food is making the Writer extremely hungry. To avoid any late night gastronomical excitement, this post will end here.

Octoburst@esplanade concourse

2008-10-04T15:54:00.000+08:00

This was an Esplanade-organised event for children, in celebration of Childrens' Day.

Only the cellist was distracted enough to find something funny. The others were busy concentrating on their music.

Audience interaction was probably the more fun part of this event - the children in the audience were very lively and spontaneous when it came to answering questions. And they had pretty amusing answers as well.

"Do you have many friends?", asked the violist to the crowd.
"Yes, 10, 000!", came one boy's reply.

The children sat in front, on the floor, while the adults gathered at the back.

"Can we take a picture with you?" asked some children, and their accompanying parents.

"Okay!" - and the females did all the smiling work, while the Violist stood at the side, thinking, "Phew, thank goodness I can give the excuse that I am keeping the tripod and not have to take pictures".

"Are you going to play the same thing for your second set of the night?" asked a few parents.
"Yes, exactly the same thing!" we replied . We expected the children to go home and prepare for school the next day, but they turned up for the second set anyway, and took more pictures! It must have been the Disney magic at work.

Seeing our photo on the large board was strangely surreal so we felt compelled to take more photos. And finally, the second set of the second day was over and we could unleash ourselves on food.

AA-KhattarWong Formula 1 Corporate Night(s)

2008-09-29T15:29:00.000+08:00

Two violins and a viola sat on the ledge overlooking the dazzling track. Granted, they were way up there and the F1 race cars looked just about as big HotWheels cars, it was a comfortable vantage point from which to observe the night's happenings. Conspiciously missing was the cello, who was too fat to squeeze on the ledge with the smaller instruments and had to be content with lying on the floor.

The display table brought out the closet-Braun-fan side in the females

"There's nothing wrong just sitting here is there? I'm hungry."

The rather large track.

One part of the rather large track - next to the Padang.

Second night, hence the tired smiles.

Shaan, the events coordinator!

(The keenly observant reader might notice that there are some continuity issues with what we were wearing. The all-pink getup was for our first night, and the black & red was for the second night. Disclaimer: We are not Ferrari fans. )

Timbre music fest 2008

2008-09-27T00:27:00.000+08:00

At last! The first post here that is not a Youtube video. It is going to take a while to get back into the writing groove, but meanwhile, I'll let the pictures fill out the rather sparse captions.

The larger-than-life poster of Timbre Music Festival.

Soundcheck, before the sun sets.

Violist playing with the camera. A rather meta shot of a shot.

3 bam cases, and the missing viola.

The crowd, the lights, the heat.

The same Sakura drink, but one had all the Ribena sucked out of by the violist.

random shot of happy-ish faces

The decibel level is more tolerable for the violinist than the cellist because the former is used to having sounds of a loud instrument blasted into her ears.

All awesome nights must end.

Jack and Rai and Artsylum!

2008-09-25T00:24:00.000+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - Little Mermaid Medley

2008-06-04T16:20:00.003+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - Reflections

2008-06-04T16:20:00.001+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - Pocahontas Medley

2008-06-04T16:19:00.007+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - Cinderella Medley

2008-06-04T16:19:00.005+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - Aladdin Medley

2008-06-04T16:19:00.003+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 爱拼才会赢。小雨伞 Ai Ping Cai Hui Ying

2008-06-04T16:19:00.001+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 春节序曲

2008-06-04T16:18:00.007+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 金蛇狂舞

2008-06-04T16:18:00.005+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 红星歌 (Hong Xing Ge)

2008-06-04T16:18:00.003+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 让我斟一杯茅台 (Rang Wo Zhen Yi Bei Mao Tai)

2008-06-04T16:18:00.001+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 月亮代表我的心 (Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xin)

2008-06-04T16:17:00.005+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 映山红 (Ying Shan Hong)

2008-06-04T16:17:00.003+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 夜来香 (Ye Lai Xiang)

2008-06-04T16:17:00.001+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 新不了情 (Xin Bu Liao Qing)

2008-06-04T16:16:00.005+08:00

Artsylum Quartet 瑶族舞曲 (Yao Zu Wu Qu)

2008-06-04T16:16:00.003+08:00

Artsylum Quartet 快乐的萨丽哈 (Kuai Le De Sa Li Ha )

2008-06-04T16:16:00.001+08:00

Artsylum Quartet - 同一首歌 (Tong Yi Shou Ge)

2008-06-04T16:13:00.001+08:00