Peranakan Place, comprising of Outdoors Cafe, Alley Bar and Acid Bar, created a theme for this year’s Halloween – Halloween Killed The Video Stars. What was unique was that they asked us, the Resonance Quartet, a string quartet, to play music from Video Games to entertain the customers and attract onlookers.

As arrangements for string quartet for Video Games music were not easily available, our cellist, Wen-Bin gamely took up the challenge and arranged the music. Besides looking for suitable music to fit the “Halloween” mood, he had to choose pieces that were more easily recognizable as well. We played music from Final Fantasy, Starcraft, Tetris, Ragnarok Online, Pokemon, and of course, we could not have done without a medley from the Mario Brothers!

And because it was Halloween, we decided to get into the mood as well and dressed up for the gig!

Resonance Quartet will be playing at Outdoors Cafe/Acid Bar along Orchard Road (map link) on 30th Oct for their Halloween theme party – Halloween Killed The Video Stars. Our in-house composer Tan Wen Bin has arranged some Video Games music, such as a Mario Brothers Medley and themes from Ragnarok and Starcraft, specially for this event! There is also a Best Costume Contest! See flyer below for details!

12 July 2010: Alana wanted to celebrate her son’s first birthday and his progress with hearing aids – how else better to do so than with live string music?

We played to an audience of mothers and little children, a mix of classical, jazz, tango and broadway, and ended it off with a Happy Birthday song with everyone singing along. It was heartwarming to see the cute birthday boy break out into a smile and clap when we finished.

An email from Alana later in the day: “thanks so much for today. Can you send me your standard marketing materials and i will email to my friends -everyone thought you were fabulous. Thanks again, you made the day special.”

We are very happy to have been able to share our music with everyone, especially the kids, too!

23 May was Bryan and Jodie’s solemnisation lunch at the quaint Viet Lang restaurant at The Arts House.

Meant as a surprise to the bride Jodie,  her bunch of girlfriends had our Violin Duo (Wen Jin and Jay) play Pachelbel’s Canon in D as she marched-in.

We might be getting a video from the lovely girls and we hope to be able to put it up soon!

“Butterfly Dreams” 梦叠蝶梦 – Dance Musical was performed on 25 July 2009 (3pm and 8pm at Victoria Theatre). Resonance Quartet was part of the live fusion ensemble which comprised 6 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos, a double bass, a pipa, a chinese flute, a piano, 2 guitars, a keyboard and percussion. The dance troupe is Dance Ensemble Singapore (DES) and Music Director (with an acting role thrown in as well) was Jiu Jian – a singer in the 90’s and more recently known as a judge for SuperBand08. Nick Shen was cast as one of the main actors – his stardom apparent when his female teen fans somehow managed to get into the backstage area after the Matinée. Singers from Echo Music provided (back-up) vocals.  Late nights were common fare as the team re-worked both music and script to improve coherence. Extremely tiring but interesting experience.

Photos by Ace, made available by Jiu Jian: