Campus Reunion Concert 2009 @ Raffles Hotel Jubilee Hall

Alright, I just got home from the above-mentioned event and I'll need to sleep soon because I have to wake up early tomorrow.

It was a good concert and I enjoyed myself. I will blog more about the details of the concert tomorrow when I come back. ^__^

Updated:

I met up my concert partner at Raffles City Starbucks at around 6.00pm for a slow dinner. I shall just appropriately nicknamed her as a patroness of local music. We went over to The Soup Spoon for a nice dinner of mushroom and pumpkin soup with nam (it's some sort of Indian-styled bread very similar to roti prata) and spent a good hour over there before we strolled along The Raffles Hotel Shopping Arcade to work off dinner before the concert.

Both of us finally entered Jubilee Hall at around 7.50pm and the singing portion of the concert opened up with Yiyuan of Campus Superstar Season 1 leading with a Cantonese song by Jacky Cheung. The concert ended with three encore songs at around 11.10pm but we did not stay for the signing of the posters because the patroness was tired and wanted to go home early. She was not the kind of people who wanted to be photographed so I did not really get to meet the Campus Superstars performers after the concert.

I believe a handful of the Campus Superstars performers are still interested to know how their concert fare through my eyes and I even received an sms wanting to know when I would be posting my concert review. So here it is:

I won't be doing a detailed performance commentaries for each of the performers during the concert, not because I did not have my notebook or my headphones, but because these are actually Campus Sueprstars graduates and thus have moved beyond the competition commentaries. Moreover, by staging a public ticketed concert, the review would be based on a different format as appropriately matched against their new statuses as young singers and performers of Singapore.

Quality of performances:
Overall, the quality had definitely improved since the last time these CSS seniors had stood onstage. Notably, Geraldine, Yiyuan, Keely, Agnes and Joanna had improved in terms of stability of singing and performance vibrancy.

Geraldine had markedly soothed into her rocker image with very solid control of the stage mood and momentum of the rock songs she had fielded.

I was duly impressed by the amount of suitable emoting done by Yiyuan for both his sentimental and rock songs.

I liked the breakthroughs made by Keely when she fielded her very sensual performance during the third item as well as her duet with Zijie.

Agnes improved considerably in terms of her techniques and stability in singing. Her strong commitment onstage to entertain the audience was also noted.

Joanna was impressive in her English song when I heard her singing mature smoothly into a nearly country-styled singing.

The rest of the performers had also some improvements made since I last saw them.

Zijie was doing much better with his falsetto skills.

Choon Keat was slightly more confident sounding whenever he was singing.

Huixian was able to commandeer beautifully high notes for her Japanese song.

Guohao was finally enjoying himself onstage, singing his heart out.

Javin could not be commented because he opted himself out from the concert due to some throat lesions but he bravely participated in two of the group songs despite his condition and I would like to compliment him on his dedication as well.

There were a few obvious hiccups though:

a) Group songs were not fully rehearsed, ending up with some performers missing their parts more than often

b) Some songs' keys were obviously too low for some performers, who inadvertently could not reach those notes at all.

c) Most of the performers did not rehearse their stage movements so whenever there was an interlude during the songs, they would fidget uncomfortably, shifting their legs, not knowing where to stand and look.

Concert Management:

Unfortunately, both the patroness of local music and I have fewer good things to say about the overall management of the concert. I understand that GW agency is the organizer of this concert but I would still comment about concert management because it was still a component in the overall enjoyment of the Campus Reunion Concert 2009.

a) Emcees - I personally do not like the emcees to speak behind the curtains because it seemed rather impolite to merely use voice alone to address the audience when even a few seconds' worth of appearance onstage to announce the next performance would have seem more polite and sincere.

b) Exit Strategies of Performers - Strangely, none of the organizers seemed to realize that most of the performers had trouble knowing when and how to exit the performing stage. I thought this issue should have been resolved during the full-dress on-site rehearsals and not reveal such an obvious weakness during concert day itself.

c) Sequencing of Performances - Twice, the performers had mistook their performances sequences, exiting and re-entering the stages awkwardly. I was wondering if there was actually a Program Manager who was supposed to remind and cue them.

d) Background Music - Both the patroness of local music and I agreed that the background music was too loud that it drowned out the performers' singing more than four times. It would be much better if there was a volume tester during the full-dress on-site rehearsals to make sure that such volumes were coordinated to give optimal entertainment.

e) Giving away of posters - What was intended for members of the audience who wanted autographed posters turned out to be a dangerous exercise as the performers hurled over 50 rolled posters into the audience. It seemed that there was no plan in hurling those posters and most performers were literally rocketing posters which landed like throwing spears and javelins, pummeling members of the audience who did not notice those flying posters. I personally blocked two incoming posters from hitting the patroness of local music but a senior member of the audience was hit right on the face because she was too old to react. If someone was badly hurt from this exercise, it would definitely blemish the concert and the organizers.

I understand that GW agency has had organized quite a number of local and regional events so it definitely had some experience behind it. If the organizers could work on the above-mentioned points further, I am sure the next Campus Reunion Concert would be even more successful and enjoyable.

That's all for the concert review. I look forward to the next concert. ^__^