(Updated on 6 April 2009)

Considered as my so-called last performance in the Voice Ensemble’s annual concert, it gives me a mixture of feelings at the end of the day. To be happy or sad, all what matters most is that I have achieved a lot for the past 3 years in this club. Think back to the concert, known as the Voice Ensemble ‘Musique’ Voyage Concert, this group has put in a lot of effort to learn the pieces despite of the limitations that we had encountered with time and manpower.

Time; is always a problem in the club. No matter how much time, ample or not, we will still end up falling behind in memorizing the music pieces. This problem is partly due to the lack of commitments by many members, not because their lack of interest but caused by the piled up of homework and projects. This end up to the next factor; manpower; which caused less people to turn up, resulting to the unequal quality of sound from various sections. Moreover, learning becomes a handicap for various poor sections as they did not have full attendance. Such problems are hard to solve but it is up to the group of new leaders to come out with new solutions to solve these issues in the club.

Back to the topic, it was a joint production of Nanyang Polytechnic Voice Ensemble and Sonaphilic for this concert to take place. As a member of NYPVE, it was only approximately a month before we work with Sonaphilic for some of the music pieces. I know Kah Hong, Shuai Xun, Ben and Xiu Hui were in it but overall, the rest of the crew was new to me.

First half of the concert was smooth but of course, there are some worrying parts for various sections as its either we can’t hit the right notes or we will lose our position to enter the queue of the music. While the rest were having their rest during the interval, members from the Sonaphilic begin to start preparing for their turn as they get to perform once the interval ends. During their performance, I felt that they sang wonderfully. There is slight dynamics involved but was not strong enough. It’s probably due to the small group that softness and loudness is a major problem to project their voices to the crowd.

Once they were done, it was the gals turn; NYPVE. A nice Japanese song, which was previously the most difficult piece for them, still proceeds smoothly to the audience. The rest followed up to sing with the gals at the later part of the concert before the finale begins. Pictures and hugs were all over as everyone thank each other for what they had done. Everyone was having an enjoyable time as we had made it at the end of the day, in regardless how messy preparations could be.

At the end of the day, it’s not just understanding and learning the right techniques of singing and the various types of music from different periods, I also get to meet a lot of new friends, who shares the same interest as mine and become the ones that I could put my trust on. For the final 3 years in V.E., is this the best way to end? Well, the Alumni is coming and guess what, its gonna be the Alumni batch of the previous committee members. Haha…

Alumni = Alum-9

Why? That’s because there’s 9 people in the group. Now that is what I called, rhymes… =]