Frances Yip Concert

Went to Frances Yip's concert last night. Audience mostly senior citizens and since it was at the indoor stadium I must say I have never seen so many old people in one place before, was quite amusing.

The place is fairly big and they only opened up one entrance. So when the performance ended there was a massive bottlenecked queue, and I was quite amused when 1 old guy told a worker: why your only open 1 entrance ah, got fire everyone there die I tell you. It was so Singaporean it made me smile.

Anyway, senior citizens don't make better audience than noisy youngsters in cinemas. The old people around me were making comments while the show was going on, got irritated and changed seats after the third song.

She shared an anecdote with us that I found amusing. A year ago she was invited to an award ceremony and asked if she minded sharing the dressing room with a 16-yr old singer. She said no, and on the day of the ceremony the latter came into the room with her manager, a wardrobe stylist, a makeup stylist with two assistants, and a hairstylist with two assistants. She, on the other hand, had only her husband in the dressing room. There's just something pensive about that scene. A young and promising star being fussed over by many people on the one hand, and just Yip (who is 62) and her husband on the other.

The performance was mostly decent. Some songs weren't my type, a number were classics, a number were very good and vaguely familiar, I tried to take note of the song titles so I can get them online but since they don't have a programme booklet most of the fishes have escaped from my net. I did, however, manage to catch this particular song. The concert shown in the video has, of course, nothing to do with Frances Yip. It's just a beautiful, beautiful song.



I was about to write that I prefer the females' voices in the song than the males, then I realised that this preference would probably have not been made possible if the males weren't there to sing in a lower pitch, so that the females' higher pitch is better contrasted.

The video can't capture the full beauty of the song though, the symphonic music is too indistinct, you need to hear the violins and percussion and the other instruments blend with the vocals. When I hear such delightful music I get the feeling that life is beautiful.

Anyway think during the intermission go toilet got a few people humming the tune.