Musical Nights...

I know... I know... I've neglected my blog some what.

Well, between work and recovering from my bouts with the cough, cold, flu (errr... no H1N1...), I've had enough material to blog about for the next 5 posts!! Hehehe...

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending a couple of musical performances with friends and family.

The first one was with my family, to attend the famous Lisbon Chamber Choir concert held in my church in Subang Jaya. The performance was to raise funds for the church building fund. We've already attended the special screening of the movie "Man for All Seasons" previously and this time, with a famous international choir in town, we could not pass up the chance to miss it!

We were entertained by the KL Children's Choir and they sang beautifully for their young age. I especially loved their rendition of "Chan Mali Chan", a traditional song.

There was also some cultural performances by youth from a nearby church too. They danced to the song "We Are One Body", which was pretty good.

Finally, we had the Lisbon Chamber Choir perform some music for us. It is just amazing how the human voice can convey such angelic tunes without any accompaniment of a musical instrument. I was blown away by the range of sounds from the deep baritones to the high pitch sopranos.

We also had a church member to perform that night as well. She came back from the US to sing for us. I can't recall her name, unfortunately, but felt that her voice was suited to classical music. She sang two songs, 1 classical and the other a more contemporary song.

The choir was so fantastic that the crowd held out for encores and the choir performed a few more songs which included a song in Chinese. I definitely enjoyed myself that night.



Then, a couple of weeks later, I joined a group of friends to attend a Jazz performance at the Dewan Philharmonik Petronas KLCC. My friends had always suggested that we attend a concert together and after looking at the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra season, we found out that Jazz band from New Orleans would be in town.

Being a lover of Jazz, especially being a great fan of Louis Armstrong, we could not miss this performance from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band or PHJB.



Although we sat right at the back of the hall, the acoustics was so fantastic that we could hear every single note clearly. The music was so lively, you could not help but to dance in your seat. We tapped our feet, clapped our hands, whistled and howled when the music got going.



The best part of it all, my friends and I joined in the Second Line for the last song of the night, the evergreen classic, "When The Saints Come Marching In". We ended up being on the stage of the hall, dancing away until the band left the hall to end the performance for the night.

It was AWESOME!!!

It certainly has fueled my determination to visit New Orleans in the future. To visit the historic French Quarter, Bourbon Street and yes... Even to go down to see PHJB again.

P/S: The videos posted of PHJB showcased some of the songs I heard that night.