My first time conducting choir in a competition here in Taiwan!
Sometime around mid-end 2023, a friend of mine, Pallas, suddenly offered me to conduct their teacher’s choir for a competition, which I immediately agreed on despite of knowing nothing (not even the name of the choir!). I was then informed that the choir consists of music teachers around New Taipei City area, practicing in Houde Elementary School (厚德國小) every Wednesday afternoon to join the competition which I later found out is the National Competition of Folksong for Teachers and Students (全國師生鄉土歌謠比賽).
The choir’s full name is 新北市聲懷絕技教師專業學習社群, but they represents Houde Elementary School for the competition. We competed in two categories: Taiwanese music and Southeast Asian music, and by the time I was appointed, they have already agreed with the repertoires for both categories in which they chose to sing my arrangement of Sarinande and Sik Sik Sibatumanikam for the Southeast Asian music category.
We ended up awarded with High Distinction for both categories! Yeay! Kudos to all the teachers that practice so hard for this competition. They even managed to dance and sing Indonesian folksong very well, so touching!
Beside conducting the choir, I found many choirs chose Indonesian folksongs, some of them performed my choral arrangements; O Ina Ni Keke was performed beautifully by Jinhua Elementary School (台北市金華國小) and Miaoli Jianguo Elementary School (苗栗縣建國國小) sung two commissioned works of mine, Anging Mamiri and Ampar-Ampar Pisang, and some other schools too! So happy to hear these familiar songs performed in Taiwan.
It was a great experience for me. You can find an article about it here (it’s in Chinese).