Renowned as a nation of commerce, cultural diversity and tropical warmth, Singapore has long been regarded as the perfect gateway to Asia, a place to rest a few days before venturing on. Those who look beneath the surface will see a modern cosmopolitan Singapore, infused with a dynamic and seductive energy that spills beyond the 710 square kilometres of this island city-state.

The arts has been central to the re-imagining of Singapore. This August, a slice of Singapore culture arrives at the Edinburgh Festivals, giving a glimpse into the confluences and connections of Asia and the world in Singapore that belie the sense and sensibility of being Singaporean.

Diaspora looks set to thrill under the mastery of the celebrated Ong Keng Sen, TheatreWorks and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Swing to the infectious beats of jazz sensation Jeremy Monteiro, and take in the rousing performances of Asian fusion music by Andrew Lum & New Asia. Revel in the thought-provoking theatricalities of performance outfit spell#7 and choreographer daniel k as they present Tree Duet and Q&A. Encounter, reflect and converse with the trio of acclaimed wordsmiths Suchen Christine Lim, Simon Tay and Edwin Thumboo.

The Singapore Showcase builds on the success of the last Singapore Season in London in 2005 to profile the diversity and growing sophistication of Singapore artists, and provides them a most prestigious stage to showcase their talents. In addition to the main Edinburgh International Festival, the Singapore Showcase will be presented at world’s largest book festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival; the ever popular Edinburgh Festival Fringe that attracts about 1.5 million visitors each year; and debut at the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival as well as the Edinburgh Mela Festival.

“This Singapore Showcase is another realisation of NAC’s internationalisation programme in bringing local talents to the global audience, and to enhance Singapore’s growing reputation as a global city for the arts,” said Mr Lee Suan Hiang, Chief Executive Officer of the National Arts Council.

To find out more about the Singapore Showcase, simply scroll down, click on any of the below links or download the brochure here.

• Calendar of Events
• Jeremy Monteiro: Singapore Swing
• New Asia
• Diaspora
• Singapore Writers
• Tree Duet
• Q&A
• Credits

Calendar of Events

The Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival presents

Jeremy Monteiro: Singapore Swing

King of Jazz in Singapore, pianist Jeremy Monteiro has chalked up 30 tremendous years of musical achievements and star-studded milestones. He has released more than 20 albums and has performed with James Moody, Toots Thielemans, Ernie Watts, Bobby McFerrin, Michael Brecker and Simon & Garfunkel amongst other music luminaries.

Joining him are fellow Singaporeans Tama Goh (drums) and Andrew Lim (guitar). A much sought-after drummer in the Asian circuit, Tama has been Jeremy’s music partner for the past 20 years. Guitarist Andrew Lim is among Singapore’s most notable new additions to the jazz scene, playing with a maturity way beyond his years.

With special guests Alan Barnes (UK), and John Allred (USA), these swinging musicians from Singapore will bring you jazz standards, Latin favourites, and original compositions by Jeremy in an inspired encounter of East-West jazz minds.

“As a pianist, he is at the top of the tree” – allaboutjazz.com

www.jeremymonteiro.com 

Supported by EFG International.

Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival
6 August, 8:30pm
The Hub, Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2NE
£12
Tickets & info: 0131 473 2000 | www.edinburghjazzfestival.co.uk 

The Edinburgh Mela Festival presents

New Asia

A new sound from the heart of Asia.

New Asia is a concept by award-winning composer and producer Andrew Lum. Its distinctive sound speaks of the synergy between Western music grooves and the exotic nuances of traditional Asian instruments, while retaining both their characteristics and personalities. New Asia has performed in WOMAD, MIDEM, the Volvo World Music Festival, and has toured to Stockholm, Paris, Cannes, Lyon, Kuala Lumpur and Chicago.

Lum’s compositions have won many awards including the International Songwriting Competition and the Billboard World Song Contest. One of his songs used by Jyuni Jyoshi Gakubou has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. His debut album Matter of Time, a collaboration with Grammy Award-winning engineer and producer Goh Hotoda from New York, was voted as one of the world’s top 20 world music albums in the Asian Wall Street Journal in 2003.

www.newasiarecords.com 

The Edinburgh Mela Festival
8 August, 3:00pm
9 August, 3:00pm
Pilrig Park
£2 for All Day Ticket on 8 or 9 August
Free for children aged 12 and under
Tickets & Info: +44 (0)131 473 2000 | www.edinburgh-mela.co.uk 

The Edinburgh International Festival presents

Diaspora
By Ong Keng Sen
TheatreWorks (Singapore)
Singapore Chinese Orchestra
European Premiere

Diaspora is a sweeping, panoramic performance exploring memory, migration, assimilation and the triumph of the human spirit. Through the personal stories of Vietnamese Americans, Indonesian Chinese, Indians in South East Asia and Orang Laut (or sea nomads), Ong Keng Sen explores notions of home, identity and the dispersion of peoples through war, through birth and through choice. Diaspora is an evolving performance. In this Edinburgh version, Keng Sen is collaborating with Rabiya Choudhry, a visual artist living and working in Edinburgh. Diaspora will incorporate Rabiya’s personal stories and that of her family members. This brings immediate relevance to the Edinburgh audiences.

Ong Keng Sen's visionary production is an epic panorama of image and sound, underscored by a timeline of Chinese music spanning 2,000 years, ranging from mountain songs to contemporary compositions, performed ‘live’ by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and juxtaposed with Toru Yamanaka’s electronic music.

'Ong Keng Sen is one of Singapore's cultural jewels.' – The Guardian

TheatreWorks is an international inter-disciplinary performance company based in Singapore, and led by Artistic Director Ong Keng Sen. Known for its reinvention of traditional performance through a juxtaposition of cultures and engagement with artists of different disciplines, Ong and TheatreWorks have toured extensively to cities in Asia, Europe and America. www.theatreworks.org.sg

Singapore Chinese Orchestra is Singapore’s only professional Chinese orchestra. Formed in 1997, it is led by Music Director Tsung Yeh, and is equally at home with contemporary music as it is with traditional Chinese music repertoire. The Orchestra was last seen in the United Kingdom in 2005 at the Barbican in London, and at The Sage in Gateshead. It has also toured Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Macau and Budapest. www.sco.com.sg

Supported by Agility Fairs and Events, Frasers Hospitality and Singapore Airlines.

Edinburgh International Festival
15 - 16 August, 8:00pm
The Edinburgh Playhouse
£8 - £30
Tickets & Info: +44 (0)131 473 2000 | www.eif.co.uk/diaspora 

The Edinburgh International Book Festival presents

Singapore Writers
Suchen Christine Lim, Simon Tay & Edwin Thumboo

The evolution of Singapore literature has long been characterised by reflective and evaluative approaches to the question of a Singaporean identity. From Simon Tay’s view on cultural hybridity to Edwin Thumboo’s nationalistic flavour to Suchen Christine Lim’s take on gender issues in cosmopolitan Singapore, Singapore literature is a rich tapestry of cultural, social, geographical, political and economic influences. This session will shed light on the inspiration and motivation behind these distinctive Singapore voices.

Suchen Christine Lim (left) is an author, playwright and winner of the Singapore Literature Prize. Her first novel Ricebowl captured the critical questioning of university students amidst the uncertainties in the early years of Singapore’s independence.

Simon Tay (right) is an author, poet, essayist and academic. He has taught at Harvard Law School, currently teaches international law and public policy at the National University of Singapore, and chairs the independent think tank, the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

Edwin Thumboo (left) is a pioneer of Singaporean poetry. Widely regarded as Singapore’s unofficial poet laureate, he edited some of the earliest anthologies of Literature in English from Singapore and Malaysia, giving writers a collective forum for expression.

Edinburgh International Book Festival
16 August, 4:00pm
Peppers Theatre, Charlotte Square, EH2 4DR
£9, £7 (with concessions)
Tickets & info: 0845 373 5888 | www.edbookfest.co.uk

Universal Arts presents at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Tree Duet
By spell#7

Tree Duet is a meditative performance about our continuing entanglement with trees. Accompanied by pianist Shane Thio, performers Paul Rae and Kaylene Tan combine an intricately interwoven set of stories and reportage with actions and gestures to create a theatrical ecology of sounds, words and images.

Eco-performance minus the moralising, Tree Duet encompasses everything from the history of the Malayan rubber industry to carbon offsetting, the music of Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu to the 100-year-old Bodhi tree at a soon-to-be-demolished Buddhist temple in Singapore.

In exploring how some of the slow mysteries of tree-time persist in the fast-paced life of a global city like Singapore, Rae and Tan invent some tree-lore for the 21st Century, and apply it to the vexed relationship between our all too human obsessions with nature, power and death.

“An intimate and immersive work… With simple text, it meshed the personal, cultural and historical into an expansive fabric meditating on human existence.” – The Straits Times

“...a stunningly beautiful work of visual poetry…meaningful and magical” – Flying Inkpot

spell#7 was formed in 1997 by Kaylene Tan (Singapore) and Paul Rae (UK), and has developed a distinctive and inventive focus on the ways history, culture and politics intersect in everyday life and experience. Its most recent work, a performance walk, Dream–Work / Dream-Home, was a collaboration with Bodies in Flight (UK), premiering at the Singapore Arts Festival 2009 and Inbetween Time Festival of Live Art and Intrigue (UK). www.spell7.net 

Edinburgh Festival Fringe
16 – 22 August, 11:30am
£5 - £12
NEW TOWN THEATRE (fringe venue 7), Freemasons’ Hall, 96 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 3DH
Tickets & Info: 0844 477 1000 | www.universalartsfestival.com 

Universal Arts presents at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Q&A
By daniel k

Q&A begins with a basic brief. The performer asks the audience: what do you want to see?

At the outset, this question seeks to replace the assumption that the spectator should be a passive member in a public performance, one whose role is to accept and go along with whatever the artist instigates. In its place, Q&A experiments with restructuring the choreographic process, granting the spectator greater authority – the viewer will clarify why he is in the theatre and what he expects of the artist, and vice versa.

Surely it is the audience’s prerogative to demand? In our world governed by economic logic, the consumer’s desires are usually prioritised. Would the relationship between the artist and the audience come up differently if it is arbitrated by the language of economics?

By partly relinquishing the artist’s authority and by encountering the audience even before the dance piece is made, daniel k’s consultative approach echoes the quirks of democracy and consumerist culture in trying to create the “perfect” dance.

Q&A was commissioned by and presented at the Singapore Arts Festival 2009.

“…outrageously inventive” – The Straits Times

"extremely simple and so satisfying, one actually feels a little guilty for enjoying it so much" – Flying Inkpot

daniel k studied Fine Art and Critical Theory at Goldsmiths College (London) under a Singapore Public Service Commission scholarship, and Choreography at the Laban Centre. His performances have toured Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok. He received the 2008 Young Artist Award (Dance) from the National Arts Council Singapore. web.mac.com/diskodanny

Edinburgh Festival Fringe
25 – 30 August, 11:30am
£5 – £8
NEW TOWN THEATRE (fringe venue 7), Freemasons’ Hall, 96 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 3DH
Tickets & Info: 0844 477 1000 | www.universalartsfestival.com 

The Singapore Showcase in Edinburgh 2009

Presented by

In Association With
Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Book Festival
Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival
Edinburgh Mela Festival
Universal Arts at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

In Partnership With

Supported By

Agility Fairs and Events
Asia Pacific Breweries Limited
Prima Food Pte Ltd