Mandopop club band to pay tribute to late Neverland honchos who died in KL car crash

A Club Neverland party night. A tribute will be made by veteran local mandopop band Queen Inc at Asian-fusion club Sonar for Neverland's co-founder Kwek Kon Chun and regional marketing director Franco Toh. -- PHOTO: THE NEVERLAND GROUP
A Club Neverland party night. A tribute will be made by veteran local mandopop band Queen Inc at Asian-fusion club Sonar for Neverland's co-founder Kwek Kon Chun and regional marketing director Franco Toh. -- PHOTO: THE NEVERLAND GROUP

Veteran local mandopop band Queen Inc will be performing on Tuesday night at Asian-fusion club Sonar to pay tribute to Club Neverland co-founder Kwek Kon Chun and Neverland's regional marketing director Franco Toh.

Both Kwek and Toh died on Sunday morning in a car accident along the KL-Seremban Expressway.

In a Facebook post, guitarist and founder of Queen, Deehellsix Xie, said his band will be doing "a remembrance night" for friends of Mr Kwek and Mr Toh, and will be doing "prayers and sing a number of songs they once loved".

"Our hearts are greatly saddened by their untimely departure. Words cannot even begin to express our sorrow for the profound loss," he wrote.

The tribute night will take place at Mr Kwek's club Sonar at Orchard Hotel at 12.15am tonight, and will close for business on Wednesday.

Mr Kwek, 35, nephew of billionaire Kwek Leng Beng, is known for redefining the genre of live Asian entertainment in the nightlife scene here. Together with his partner Eugene Tin, he founded Club Neverland at Orchard Plaza in 2009, one of the few prominent clubs here to introduce a "Thai-disco" concept, where singers and dancers from Thailand would perform on stage to a live backing band.

Mr Toh has been working with the Neverland group for the past few years as its marketing director.

Over the years, Neverland evolved from that concept to an Asian-fusion live entertainment club, featuring singers and dancers from Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. Business did well, and soon it expanded, opening a Neverland outlet in Kuala Lumpur in 2011, Neverland II in St James Power Station in 2012, and club Sonar in Orchard Hotel. The group opened another outlet, Pixie Luxe in Scotts Garden, earlier this year in Kuala Lumpur.

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