By Lim Soo Ping
It was the year 1994. Performing on stage at the annual dinner of Alpha Society was a singer accompanied by two guitarists. When the performance ended, I whispered to my wife that I would learn to play the guitar. And I promised that I would be better than those two guitarists. Placidia just smiled.
A few months later, I bought an entry-level guitar for $140 and enrolled at the Yamaha Music School for evening lessons. That was the beginning of my life-long journey with classical guitar.
The guitar has always fascinated me. How does one, by plucking the strings using just one hand, produce the melody, rhythm and bass of a song? The clarinet that I played in school produced only the melody.
At age 44, taking guitar lessons proved to be quite a challenge. I had to learn to read music scripts. In my school band, we used the numbered musical notation system.
In my guitar courses, most of my fellow students were about half my age. Many would drop out before a course was completed. After two years of guitar lessons and several grading tests, I decided to take a break. But I continued attending guitar concerts and guitar festivals in Singapore. I took a master class under guitar maestro Carlos Barbosa Lima of Brazil. He helped me polish up on a Brazilian guitar solo piece that I was practising.
In 2009, at the 30th Anniversary Dinner of the Canadian Alumni Singapore, together with my guitar mentor Han Vota, a business consultant and long-time friend, I accompanied on stage the song performance of Andre Bocelli’s, Con Te Partiro. Placidia was present. I have delivered on my promise to her!
I was also intrigued by the art of flamenco. In 2000, I moved on to learning the flamenco guitar. I spent five years taking weekly lunch-hour lessons at Yamaha Music School. The right hand techniques in flamenco guitar are quite different from those for classical guitar. A special moment came when I participated in a workshop conducted by Paco Peña, a famous flamenco guitar maestro of Spain.
In 2001, a chance meeting with a flamenco dancer, who was also taking guitar lessons, led me to collaborate in flamenco dance performance. I roped in two fellow flamenco guitarist friends to join me. Within two years, we debuted as a full flamenco group (6 dancers, 3 guitarists, a singer and 2 palmeros) at the annual fund-raising dinner of the Singapore Dance Theatre held at Fullerton Hotel. We performed Alegrias as the opening performance item for the evening.
In 2006, at the invitation of The Arts House, I put together a guitar and flamenco dance concert (Heels and Strings) at the Old Parliament House. The proceeds went to The Business Times Budding Artists Fund.
In 2007, we performed Garrotin at the donor appreciation dinner of the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre. President S R Nathan was the guest-of-honour.
Throughout my journey in guitar music, Placidia has been most supportive. She put up with my rather noisy practices at home. At her suggestion, I took Spanish language lessons so that I might appreciate flamenco culture better. That also helped my understanding of the annotations on music scores for guitar.
(Note: Flamenco dance is practised and performed in many communities in the world, including in Japan, Hong Kong, Canada, the UK, the USA and India. Watch this flamenco dance performed by Vivek Anand and Fatima in the back lane of a house in India.)
(Feature photo by Kazuo Ota on Unsplash)
