RACO Concert

Attended Raffles Alumni Chinese Orchestra concert last night. It was held at Republic Cultural Centre at 8pm. I was from RICO, if you don’t know, haha. My senior was one of the performers and invited me to attend. I could have been one of the performers because there was some sort of a recruitment drive via email. But I conveniently ignored it, haha.

Anyway, yeah, the first CO concert I watched after sooo long. I met up with my friend (ex-classmate and ex-RICO mate) at Woodlands MRT, but he was 15 minutes late. It seems like a lot of my friends do not observe punctuality. It was almost 7.45pm, and I had to lead the way based on my memory… But somehow we walked in the wrong direction, and ended up at some Marsiling industrial estate, lol. Blame the darkness. It was so dark that I couldn’t recognise the correct path.

Sigh, it was so deja vu. I recall heading in the wrong direction when I was going for a CIP end-May. Dots. When we eventually somehow realised it, we decided to run all the way to Republic Poly. Part of the reason was also because we were scared of a repeat of Kallang slashing… It was quite dark, and there were a lot of foreign workers around. Thanks to all the training I had I outran my friend who had always been fitter than me. He said he hasn’t run for quite a while – no wonder.

We reached the venue a few minutes after 8pm, but the concert hadn’t started, luckily. We sat down, cooled down, and the concert started. I felt quite nostalgic… All the familiar instruments… Huqin, dizi, sheng, suona, guzheng, the cheena percussion instruments, cello, and double bass, which i played in RICO. :D

I played before, back in RICO, two of the pieces performed. It brought back fond memories… Of the days I practised hard to master the piece despite finding it a chore (because double basses hardly play the melody – how boring)… Of the orchestral practice sessions where I had to ensure I could play the piece to a reasonable standard so as to avoid embarrassment… Of the few occasions when I got blisters on my fingers due to excessive plucking of the thick strings… Of the concerts I participated in and actually enjoyed… And of the times I got to exert my authority as a sectional leader, haha.

I totally enjoyed the whole performance. It seems like I can appreciate Chinese music better. Western classical music is a no-no for me. :\ I guessed the audience also enjoyed very much, ’cause the applause was tremendous. There were even people who did a standing ovation for the orchestra. xD Eventually, there were two encores because everyone just kept clapping and cheering. I was also quite agitated and clapped very loudly too, haha. <3

The whole concert ended at about 10.20pm. We went to mingle around with the performers whom we know. There were a lot of familiar faces ’cause many of my seniors participated. Wow, it’s great that they still feel a bond towards CO despite them busy with NS and uni life. If I were still in touch with double bass and had the time, I would definitely perform too!

WELL DONE, YEAH! :D Haha. A great night of music. I reached home at about 12am, tired but contented. :)

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