Saturday, January 27, 2007

Fritz Quartet at Joo Chiat Square

6th Jan 2007

As the Fritz Quartet is always keen to do our bit for the community, it was an honour for the Fritz Quartet to be invited to kick start a series of performances, held at the Joo Chiat square for 2007, an intiative started by grassroots leaders seeking to revamp the image of Joo Chiat.

We were pleasantly surprised upon our arrival to discover that our performance area was a simple cemented open space, which once supported a petrol station. In comparison to various indoor and outdoor functions that we have played for, this was truly an unusual space for a string quartet performance because it offered us a blank canvas to paint our performance, giving us the space to unleash our raw energy and potential.

It was around 5.30pm when we reached the venue, and the weather was still considerably hot. Minister of Parliament, Dr Chan Soo Sen, had arrived by then, and as all systems were good to go, we decided to proceed with the programme despite the sweltering heat.

We began the program with Broadway Musicals, followed by Popular Classics and finally, Chinese Folk-song arrangements. It was a particularly demanding task as the glare of the sun were on our faces and we had to combat the heat, as well as the strong wind. Undeterred, we soldiered on, with Max doubling as our emcee for the day. The audience in return gave us their full support with their affectionate applauses, and interacted actively with us. Encouraged by Max, the audience indulged in a sing-along session while we played familiar Chinese favourites such as 月亮代表我的心 "Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo de Xin" and 夜来香 "Ye Lai Xiang".

A Lianhe Zaobao (local Chinese newspaper) reporter and photographer were also present. Kudos to the photographer who tried to dodge our bows in order to capture wonderful pictures of Fritz Quartet members in action.

Click here for the link to the article.

Encouraged by the audience, we presented two encores, with the excerpt from the "Butterfly Lovers" generating the most buzz. A brief interaction with the reporter and grassroots members ended our interesting performing experience at the Joo Chiat Square.

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Tuesday, January 02, 2007

New Year Greetings from The Fritz Quartet

Hello all!

It has been a great year for us, playing for various functions and weddings, and meeting so many new people in the process of performing for these joyous events!

We apologise that we have not featured all our gigs in our blog entries, but we would like to say that all the events that we play for are equally important to us!

Coming up, the kind folks at Joo Chiat have invited us to kickstart their Joo Chiat Square initiative and we will be putting up a 1 hour programme on the 6th January 2007 at 5.30pm. Do keep a lookout for us. Please refer to http://myjoochiat.com for details.

Happy New Year to all :)