Gardens at the Bay opened with 2 concerts.
I attended the second one with Corrinne May performing.
First, the Gardens at the Bay are incredible.
I mean seriously, what is this huge monstrosity that we've built?
We build giant man-made trees because we want to be close to nature but natural trees are too small and grow too slowly for our liking. Singaporeans like things big and expensive.
But I digress.
The concert venue was packed!
I really should have arrived earlier as this was a free seating concert.
I ended up way behind and the atmosphere wasn't all that great so far behind.
So the concert started with Corrinne May singing Love Song For #1.
This came as a surprise to me because I expected her to start with a bang. But i guess she was slowly warming up the crowd that was still streaming in from the city.
Her second song picked up the pace with one of my favourites from the tv show Chase that I so loved in my younger days, Save Me.
2 things hit me. The first was immediate.
Her voice live is exactly what you hear on her CDs. She's really that good.
The second thing took a while to hit me.
She sounds exactly the same live as on CD.
I don't just mean her voice.
Her song arrangement, her backup vocalist, her musicians... it sounds exactly like I'm listening to her CD. I'm not saying she lip-syncs - she definitely does not and her imperfections on stage show how real she is - but this is probably the exact same team that recorded the albums and they were playing in the exact same way.
It's not a bad thing, they were very professional in their musicianship, but I was expecting a little more for the price of this ticket.
The NDP rehearsal fireworks provided quite a beautiful backdrop to the concert and most of their bursts were timed quite coincidentally at the end of her songs. But more than once did they distract the audience from the concert itself.
The thing is, her concert was not particularly exciting. For one, she did all her songs exactly as we know them. For two... she was not a very charismatic person between songs and didn't work the crowd very well. And yes, after 6 or 7 songs, you begin to realise that all her songs sound quite alike, and most of which are slow tunes.
I got quite fidgety almost an hour into the concert. I didn't want to feel this way, but I guess it didn't help that I was seated so far back and people were not the most enthusiastic around me. So I too stopped screaming my head off between songs.
She had just finished playing 5 Loaves and 2 Fishes and began the piano introduction to the next song that made me sit up and listen hard. This was a tune I could not immediately place, but the moment she started singing her first line, I knew something was just about to happen in me...
This was one of her most powerful songs. And it brought 2 images to mind. The first was that of leaving my parents, as I had done when I first went to India alone. It was painful, but it was what had to be done.
The second image was from the movie that I had just watched that afternoon - The Kite Runner. I cried my eyes out at the end of the movie over the incredibly pervasive and debilitating injustice in the world. Fly Away brought images of the kite motif from the movie, along with the whole host of heavy emotions, back to mind.
And the two images came together to remind me of my calling to leave my family and this beautiful land of giant trees to go to where injustice is great and fight for the rights of the oppressed.
I said a prayer by the end of the song, recommitting my life to that call.
Then she started singing her next song...
Let me be Your instrument
Let me be Your voice
Let me be the reservoir
Where thirsty hearts rejoice
Let me be the hand
That wipes the tears away
Oh Lord,
If it be Your will
Let me be Your Song
Her words echoed my prayer a few seconds before.
I was very moved and felt so ministered to.
In fact, from that moment, I was at peace.
No matter how many more songs she sang that sounded the same, I loved every single moment there.
I think that's the way Corrinne May's music works. She isn't a performer in the true sense of the word. No, she's a singer-songwriter, and she's very good at her craft. But there's something about her music that goes beyond notes and tunes. She sings of life, and her songs grow on you and touch you over time. So at this concert she played her songs just as they were, just as is familiar to you, and in doing so brings you back the sweet memories that come with hearing her voice in these heartfelt songs.
She was no great performer, but she was far more than that. In reaching for something beyond this world, she let God use her songs to touch people's souls, as mine had been refreshed today.
This was something no professional band could do on their own.
I was glad I went for the concert.
And I'm sure I was not the only one touched;
No one left after the concert for a good few minutes, so Corrinne May came out and did an encore of the song I wanted to hear most:
It was a nice concert. Not a great one, but one that ministered to the soul.
I kept thinking about what I experienced today as I passed the great trees that had now taken on an alien form on the way out.
I attended the second one with Corrinne May performing.
First, the Gardens at the Bay are incredible.
I mean seriously, what is this huge monstrosity that we've built?
We build giant man-made trees because we want to be close to nature but natural trees are too small and grow too slowly for our liking. Singaporeans like things big and expensive.
But I digress.
The concert venue was packed!
I really should have arrived earlier as this was a free seating concert.
I ended up way behind and the atmosphere wasn't all that great so far behind.
So the concert started with Corrinne May singing Love Song For #1.
This came as a surprise to me because I expected her to start with a bang. But i guess she was slowly warming up the crowd that was still streaming in from the city.
Her second song picked up the pace with one of my favourites from the tv show Chase that I so loved in my younger days, Save Me.
2 things hit me. The first was immediate.
Her voice live is exactly what you hear on her CDs. She's really that good.
The second thing took a while to hit me.
She sounds exactly the same live as on CD.
I don't just mean her voice.
Her song arrangement, her backup vocalist, her musicians... it sounds exactly like I'm listening to her CD. I'm not saying she lip-syncs - she definitely does not and her imperfections on stage show how real she is - but this is probably the exact same team that recorded the albums and they were playing in the exact same way.
It's not a bad thing, they were very professional in their musicianship, but I was expecting a little more for the price of this ticket.
The NDP rehearsal fireworks provided quite a beautiful backdrop to the concert and most of their bursts were timed quite coincidentally at the end of her songs. But more than once did they distract the audience from the concert itself.
The thing is, her concert was not particularly exciting. For one, she did all her songs exactly as we know them. For two... she was not a very charismatic person between songs and didn't work the crowd very well. And yes, after 6 or 7 songs, you begin to realise that all her songs sound quite alike, and most of which are slow tunes.
I got quite fidgety almost an hour into the concert. I didn't want to feel this way, but I guess it didn't help that I was seated so far back and people were not the most enthusiastic around me. So I too stopped screaming my head off between songs.
She had just finished playing 5 Loaves and 2 Fishes and began the piano introduction to the next song that made me sit up and listen hard. This was a tune I could not immediately place, but the moment she started singing her first line, I knew something was just about to happen in me...
This was one of her most powerful songs. And it brought 2 images to mind. The first was that of leaving my parents, as I had done when I first went to India alone. It was painful, but it was what had to be done.
The second image was from the movie that I had just watched that afternoon - The Kite Runner. I cried my eyes out at the end of the movie over the incredibly pervasive and debilitating injustice in the world. Fly Away brought images of the kite motif from the movie, along with the whole host of heavy emotions, back to mind.
And the two images came together to remind me of my calling to leave my family and this beautiful land of giant trees to go to where injustice is great and fight for the rights of the oppressed.
I said a prayer by the end of the song, recommitting my life to that call.
Then she started singing her next song...
Let me be Your instrument
Let me be Your voice
Let me be the reservoir
Where thirsty hearts rejoice
Let me be the hand
That wipes the tears away
Oh Lord,
If it be Your will
Let me be Your Song
Her words echoed my prayer a few seconds before.
I was very moved and felt so ministered to.
In fact, from that moment, I was at peace.
No matter how many more songs she sang that sounded the same, I loved every single moment there.
I think that's the way Corrinne May's music works. She isn't a performer in the true sense of the word. No, she's a singer-songwriter, and she's very good at her craft. But there's something about her music that goes beyond notes and tunes. She sings of life, and her songs grow on you and touch you over time. So at this concert she played her songs just as they were, just as is familiar to you, and in doing so brings you back the sweet memories that come with hearing her voice in these heartfelt songs.
She was no great performer, but she was far more than that. In reaching for something beyond this world, she let God use her songs to touch people's souls, as mine had been refreshed today.
This was something no professional band could do on their own.
I was glad I went for the concert.
And I'm sure I was not the only one touched;
No one left after the concert for a good few minutes, so Corrinne May came out and did an encore of the song I wanted to hear most:
It was a nice concert. Not a great one, but one that ministered to the soul.
I kept thinking about what I experienced today as I passed the great trees that had now taken on an alien form on the way out.
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