ChildAid auditionees wow selection panel
The acts are so good, the creative team is rewriting the script to fit as many as they can
THEY came to the ChildAid auditions to dance, sing, act or play a musical instrument – or even do all four. Some acts were so impressive, the creative team is now thinking hard about how to accommodate all of them in the year-end show.
ChildAid’s creative director Melissa Sim said: “I’m really excited and inspired by the quality of the auditionees. We’re tweaking the script to fit some acts because they’re so good, and we simply have to have them in ChildAid 2023.”
ChildAid is an annual charity concert jointly organised by The Business Times (BT) and The Straits Times (ST). It typically raises about S$2 million a year with the help of countless sponsors and donors, including main sponsors UOB, Citi and Mohamed Abdul Jaleel, founder and CEO of MES Group.
The funds benefit The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund (STSPMF) and The Business Times Budding Artists Fund (BT BAF). The former gives financially-disadvantaged students a monthly allowance for school-related expenses, while the latter helps young talents from low-income families to pursue the arts for free.
This year’s ChildAid concert, its 19th edition, will be a musical dinner theatre production set in 1930s pre-independent Singapore. Guests will be served food while they help the cast of characters solve the disappearance of a famous singer.
The auditions began on Saturday at youth arts training centre 10 Square, and will continue into the week. The first to arrive on Saturday were seven-year-old Wee twins, Penelope and Zicheng, who played two songs each on the guzheng and dizi respectively.
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Their father Jerald Ben Wee, an inline skating instructor, said: “My wife and I want our kids to develop holistically. So apart from their subjects in school, we also have them learn musical instruments, so they can develop their brains in different ways.”
After the twins, Yee Hong Shyan, a preternaturally confident 12-year-old, played his own upbeat jazz-inflected composition titled Downtown on the piano. “I want to perform in ChildAid because it’s a good platform to share my passion for music, while also helping disadvantaged kids,” he said.
Other auditionees included a group of seven talented girl cellists aged between seven and 10 playing Camille Saint-Saens’ The Swan, Singapore-born Russian 11-year-old Andrei Slobodyanyuk showing exceptional flair for the violin, and 10-year-old Pragnya Rajagopalan narrating a postmodern story of Frosty the Snowman.
When the audition concludes this Wednesday, some 70 acts shortlisted from 202 submissions would have performed before a selection panel comprising Sim, music director Eugene Yip, co-producer/director Ross Nasir, as well as representatives from BT, ST, BT BAF and STSPMF.
Yip says: “Almost all of the children have at least a good level of proficiency given their age. There were six- and seven-year-olds holding their own on their instruments; a young electone player churning out his own sophisticated arrangements, and even a young piano maestro showing technique that many pianists take years to achieve. It’s such a humbling experience to see youth earnestly stepping forward for a good cause.”
The concert will be held at Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre on Dec 4.
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