Two Albums in 2012

The two albums that I was working on, in late 2011 and early 2012, published this year.

I am trying to embed the sample player here on my blog. Let's try.

This is the Jazzy Sound of Teresa Teng by Winnie Ho. It was such a fun record to do, and I got to implement what I believe in music, into this re-arrangement of Teresa Teng's classics. When we are doing covers of old classic, we don't try to sound like the classic. What is the point to imitate the classic, when they are already classic. Might as well just listen to the original right? But these classics are great vehicles for our creativity (some people might ask, why not write your own originals? Mind you, I have written my own originals. But revitalize classics are acts of creativity as well!)

Here, we try to bring out the meaning of the lyrics, musically. We try to infuse different music from different cultures. We love to play with atmosphere, with ambient, with feels. We had a lot of fun.

Another album that I was working on in late 2011, and early 2012, is Shades of Passion with our Malaysian chanteuse, Ms. Yudi. It was also fun. Just two of us, voice and piano, retelling the tales of yesteryear.
Initially it was only for our own enjoyment, but then grew to become an album.
The challenge was there, so bare a setting, not one tune, but 12 tunes (at the end, we discarded two of the tunes recorded) to make them interesting throughout. Yudi is at her best here, soulful and introspective.

Year 2012 seems to be the year of new territories for me. Am fortunately enough to be invited to arrange for a musical, and also write music for a movie. I have learned a lot musically from musicals. Ah! those days listening to a lot of Lloyd Webber, Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, all on CDs. Later on watched some on VCDs!
As for films, it was the medium that I learned to listen to spoken English (which helped a lot when I took my TOEFL exam!). Loved the soundtracks of Schindler's List, Cinema Paradiso, Shine, Mr. Holland's Opus, Star Wars, Godfather etc.... Usually got to read about the films on film magazines, then listened to the music on CDs, then only get to watch the film on VCD, or later on DVDs (in that order)

On top of that, something really big is happening to my life now. Am grateful with my fortunate life so far.