SING LIT SOUNDS: A DISCORD DISCO
Groove to music inspired by local literature at this digital disco, held by literary non-profit organisation Sing Lit Station over group-chatting platform Discord.
Home-grown music acts Fauxe, Mantravine and .gif have created tracks that weave together texts by Singapore writers in Malay, Chinese and Tamil. Music producer Fauxe, for instance, wanted to stay true to the spirit of the Malay texts he was working with and made use of a range of voice samples from the writers themselves and other poets who volunteered.
The party will feature literary readings, a multilingual open mic and Ask-Me-Anything sessions with the musicians. Sing Lit Sounds was originally commissioned for the #BuySingLit movement in March but could not go on because of the Covid-19 outbreak.
"With everyone feeling digital fatigue and suffering from an overdose of Zoom calls, we decided that now is the best time to bring readers and writers back together in a fun way," says Sing Lit Station general manager Charlene Shepherdson.
"A Discord party is the perfect place for introverts and extroverts to meet. The platform recreates what we wanted to explore with a silent disco where you can easily change tracks by switching channels, yet we're able to do so much more with Discord.
"Having autonomy to hop around rooms and join anything you want creates a sense of play and exploration that's missing in Zoom events."
WHERE: Discord
WHEN: Oct 16, 7 to 10.30pm
ADMISSION: Free; limited-edition fun packs at $8 for one or $24 for four. Register at singlitsounds.peatix.com
OMM RESTARTS!
Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) returns to live concert in this pilot performance with 28 musicians, conducted by Chan Tze Law and featuring cellist Qin Li-Wei.
On the programme are Franz Schubert's Erlkonig and the first movement of Allegro Moderato from Joseph Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 2 In D Major, as well as the newly-commissioned Folk Games by Singaporean composer Jonathan Shin.
OMM artistic development committee chairman Christopher Cheong says: "It is certainly a somewhat surreal and strange feeling for many of us, especially since we have gone for over half a year without watching or performing in a live concert."
The challenges they faced included musicians having to play farther apart from each other - string players have to be 1m apart and wind players 2m apart - and having repertoire choices constrained by the reduced number of musicians.
Tickets are limited as a maximum of 50 audience members can attend each performance.
WHERE: Singapore Conference Hall Concert Hall, 7 Shenton Way
MRT: Tanjong Pagar
WHEN: Sunday, 5 and 8pm
ADMISSION: $10 from ticketing@orchestra.sg
INFO: www.orchestra.sg/omm-restarts-concert
POETRY UNDER THE SOUTHERN BOUGH
This hybrid performance weaves together dance, Peking opera, music and theatre on a dreamy journey through 20 poems by Ming dynasty playwright Tang Xianzu. They were selected from A Dream Under The Southern Bough, which Toy Factory Productions has been staging as a three-year trilogy.
Though there are no longer tickets available for the live show, presented by Arts House Limited as part of Singapore International Festival of Arts (Sifa) v2.020, it will also be virtually streamed.
WHERE: Sifa All-Access
WHEN: Tomorrow, 8pm (live stream); Wednesday to Oct 20 (video-on-demand)
ADMISSION: $10 from sifa.sg and sistic.com
INFO: Performed in Mandarin with English surtitles
FINDING MUKUL
Bangladeshi migrant-worker poet Md Mukul Hossine has his poem Lockdown brought to life onstage as a classical bharatanatyam performance in this video by Bhaskar's Arts Academy.
Mukul, who has published the poetry collections Me Migrant (2016) and Braving Life (2017), was in his home village visiting his sick father when the Covid-19 travel restrictions stranded him there and has since been unable to return to work in Singapore.
He penned Lockdown during this time and recites it during the performance, choreographed by Cultural Medallion recipient Santha Bhaskar.
WHERE: bit.ly/2GDveMx
ADMISSION: Free
INFO: Performed in Bengali with English surtitles
