Front Row

An exhibition focused on refugees opened last weekend featuring works by six photojournalists and photographers--from Turkey, Syria, Russia, France and Malaysia. The mission of the exhibition which is aided by Think City is, through “the use of images, writings and takes” to “initiate positive actions to reach a better understanding of the present [refugee] crisis. Our guests share their encounters with refugees and how they cope holding a camera to pain, suffering, despair and sometimes, hope.

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Creating a performance takes time. The ideas and concepts that inform it need time to gestate, percolate and develop.  Toccata Studio has been working ‘2020’ a project about “the future and change” since early 2015. Our guests tell us how 20 months have breathed a different kind of life and changes into the production about time.

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Our guest, the featured solo cellist in this weekend’s concerts, answers how being Chinese-born, and with an Australian and English education after 13 years in China inform his music. He also gives his perspective on how to listen to classical music played by different musicians when so many are technically more than able to deliver the notes. He tells about inspiring and moving the listener with a story. He also shares why he thinks the cello is the ideal instrument--not the violin--because of its range. An all-cello concert will sound quite different from a chamber orchestra.

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We discover the history of  this academy for adult-non-dancers to learn ballet. The two students who are performers tell about the progress they’ve made and how far yet they need to go. Dancing is also about self-acceptance and not caring too much what the world thinks.

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The director tells about the impetus to undertake this play which focuses on the changing landscape of our languages. He also shares his discoveries of the impediments to honest communication, as language is easily used to manipulate truth, meanings,  intentions, thoughts.

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British Indian sarod maestro returns to Kuala Lumpur with the Asian premiere of his new show ‘King of Ghosts’, a live film score set to an Indian arthouse film ‘Goopy Gayen Bagha Bayen’ by Satyajit Ray. The musician tells of the composition and the motivations behind it.

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Oboe player, Howard Ng, talks about English music which he will perform with Dr Tham Horng Kent at the piano, and about the oboe as a classical instrument. He instructs and informs on the oboe and points to a recital with Ensemble Virama (of which he is the artistic leader) titled ‘Unending Melody’. This performance will take place at the end of the month. He reveals the challenges of running such a group when the majority of the musicians reside in the Klang Valley and he in Sabah.

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Is the day the start of the night, or the night the start of the day? Inspired by postcards of landscapes and informed by events in the country, Jalaini Abu Hassan--or affectionately known as Jai--marries and presents these elements in a series of 12 postcard style paintings. Six are in colour and six monochromatic. 

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Our guests are two performers who have starred in several musicals staged by Dama Orchestra, now renamed Dama Asia Production.  They tell us about ‘Musically Yours’ as a celebration of Dama’s creative journey and share with us the joys and challenges of reprising roles and relearning dance-steps which were performed sometimes more than a couple of years ago.

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The producer tells why her young theatre company, formed in 2012, is exploring the issue of stereotyping, and whether stereotypes suit best in daylight when the glare compels us to hide behind acceptable roles. Then at dusk the truth appears and only then in the half-light do we truly see and know.

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