Live4MusiC

Turbo Goth

Bangkutaman

Hollywood Nobody

Buddhistson

Noughts And Exes

Pet Conspiracy

By Sujin Thomas

HE HAD a roaring start to his career, opening a show for blues legend B.B. King when he was just 12.

Now 34, American blues-rock guitar prodigy Joe Bonamassa can stake claim to sharing the stage with the likes of Robert Cray and Buddy Guy.

Bonamassa - who was named Billboard's No. 1 Blues Artist last year, and released his 12th album, Dust Bowl, in March - will perform his first gig in Singapore on Sunday.

In a recent telephone interview, Bonamassa speaks to my paper about performing alongside legends.

What runs through your mind each time you perform with a guitar legend?

Once you get up on stage...there is no time for hero worship and you just play.

(And) when you can count your heroes as your friends, you find out that they're just dudes - guys with guitars.

What is the hardest part of being a musician?

Songwriting is the hardest part for me.

When I do write songs, they tend to be decent ones, but I'm not Bob Dylan.

You picked up the guitar at age four. Was music what you always intended to pursue?

My father laid a guitar in my hands when I was a kid and I never let it go. It turned out to be something that was very influential and powerful in my life.

Sure, Mosaic hasn't reached the scale and ambition of the San Miguel Primavera Sound in Barcelona in May or SXSW in Austin, Texas, in March, but what Mosaic has going for it is its unerring devotion to quality.

That entails an element of risk-taking, which is sometimes greater than most expect.

Occasionally, some acts can't fill the halls. That happened to wyrd-folk heroine Vashti Bunyan, who was too obtuse for an 11pm slot at the 1,600-seat Concert Hall last year.

Still, that artistic gambit was worth it. It sent out a clear message to increasingly sophisticated music fans here, and to those in the region who fly here to catch Mosaic: That the Esplanade will go out on a limb to bring in stellar musicians. It's branding worth cultivating.

So, never mind media talk about so-called "concert fatigue"; it boils down to choosing the right acts for the right time.

That pure passion for music is the hallmark of a great festival. It's infectious. It's the same rush when you first fall in love with a song. It's a milestone, a powerful Proustian trigger of great memories.

This was manifest in various, sometimes contrarian, ways at Mosaic this year.

The audience went wild for the charismatic Jamie Lidell. They gladly chanted the lyrics of Another Day as the sprightly one roused all to their feet. A seriously funny raconteur and a sizzling vocalist, he invoked a whole orchestra simply by looping and layering his beatboxing.

At the Tortoise gig, the crowd were wowed by the band's rarefied level of musicianship.

Their agile amalgamation of spaghetti-western and Orientalia in I Set My Face To The Hillside was stunning. The crowd roared.

In contrast, you could hear a pin drop at Joanna Newsom's late-night soiree.

Her music, ornate, very smart and otherworldly, was so different from the rest of today's pop, all, or most, were rapt (or at least, couldn't believe what they were hearing).

The easy way she had with her ginormous harp was impressive, and the audience hanged on her fluid, dizzying plucking of strings, and that unmistakable trill, alternately child-like and witchy, spinning epics ranging far and wide.

I had seen her in Lille, northern France last September, with the same set-up, and she seemed a little perturbed then, fastidiously retuning the harp all the time. At Mosaic, the mood was different. Ever the perfectionist, she was in tip- top form, even apologising for a "mistake" at the end of In California. What that mistake was, only she would know.

"I'm nervous tonight... This is the last gig of a one-year tour with the same band," she said. "I want it to be perfect."

The performance was perfect, including that tiny, imperceptible flaw.

It's such serendipitous moments you cannot plan for that mark Mosaic as a very special thing to cherish.

- My Paper 

It’s been a little more than 24 hours and I’m still reeling from Broken Social Scene’s rockin’ concert at the Esplanade. Fans got every penny they paid for as the band played on for almost two-and-a-half hours. I ended up with a backache – not that I’m complaining.

What a well-coordinated circus it was as they conjured up their wall of sound live. It was a great bunch of old and new material – I especially liked it when they mellowed down to tender pieces like Anthems For A Seventeen Year-old Girl and Lover’s Spit.

Spontaneous jams and riffs were interspersed throughout the show, giving audiences something they could never recreate on their iPod. The live mix was especially commendable. The guitars and other various instruments were intricately layered and made for quite the stereophonic sound experience.

This made it easy to swallow the instances of ear-splitting feedback. But hey, this is BSS we’re talking about, it’s a rock concert not a concerto session, so a little unwelcome twang or two is pretty much expected.

GERMAN orchestra Berliner Philharmoniker (Berlin Philharmonic) has set a new record in ticket prices for a classical concert here. Top-tier seats for its upcoming two performances at the Esplanade Concert Hall on Nov 23 and 24 cost $680.

This is the most expensive ticket price ever for a performance presented by the Esplanade.

The art centre's programming officer Christel Hon says the cost of bringing in a top-class orchestra such as the Berliner Philharmoniker is extremely high. The Esplanade cannot reveal how much it costs to bring in the 128-member orchestra due to contractual agreements.

She adds: 'In fact, ticket prices for both nights are heavily subsidised. Even if both concerts were to sell out, we would not recover presentation costs.'

Lower-tier tickets are priced at $80 and $150. Cheaper concession tickets are also available to students, senior citizens and full-time national servicemen. Student tickets cost $40 and $75, while senior citizens and full-time national servicemen pay $56 and $105.

All the concession tickets as well as the $80 and $150 seats were sold out within hours of going on sale on May 22. About half of the tickets on both nights, costing $250, $280, $350, $500 and $680, are still available.

- The Straits Times 

IF THE audience at British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap's maiden Singapore gig on Monday had to liken her to a fictional character, they would likely have chosen Alice In Wonderland's Mad Hatter.

Like a femme version of the whimsically weird but wonderful character, the 32-year-old Londoner was every bit the eccentric genius-type as she took fans on a two-hour romp through her ethereal fairyland.

When she arrived onstage at 10.15pm, after two opening acts (and an intermission which ran a tad long thanks to wardrobe issues, as Heap sheepishly explained later), she quickly launched into the live creation of her music.

And that's where the magic was. The Grammy-winning electronica sorceress - who recently released her third album, Ellipse - wore tiny microphones on each wrist and flitted between instruments, from her transparent piano, to keyboards and cool high-tech joysticks (which record and loop sounds).

Heap - who released her first solo album, iMegaphone, in 1998 before becoming part of acclaimed electronic duo Frou Frou - took her time winding through the 18 songs on her setlist.

After opening with First Train Home from Ellipse, the oddball and her three band members launched into Bad Body Double - a lively ode to body image.

Stripped-down ballads like Let Go allowed Heap's melancholic vocals to shine.

In between songs, the chatty musician waxed lyrical about the inspiration behind the music she has written, speaking in an almost stream-of-consciousness manner.

At times, it seemed as though she had forgotten that she was onstage, playing to a large audience.

During the encore, the crowd was treated to the seminal Hide And Seek (which gained popularity after being featured on American drama series The O.C.) and joined in a complicated three-part harmony to Just For Now.

And then, after an almosteerie rendition of The Moment I Said It (2005), it was over, and the lady of the hour forlornly said her goodbyes, promising to return (hopefully) by year-end.

- MyPaper

Date: 19 July, Sunday
Event: Good Vibes at the Waterfront, Esplanade
Organised by: Health Promotion Board

This was an event organised by the Health Promotion Board to promote their campaign, "Positive Thinking for a Healthy Mind" using music to calm oneself and combat the stresses in our daily fast-paced city lives. The message was well put across by Kewei through her soothing voice and affable nature.  Venue was ideal too, wonderful backdrop of city by night.

If you do not know Kewei, she actually does background vocals for various artistes such as David Tao, Lin Junjie, A mei and Wang Lee Hom for their world tours and own her own, she is a singer/songwriter for both English and Chinese Songs!