Singapore International Chinese Choral Festival

19th Aug 2006. It has to be a day that I will never, ever forget. Because this is the day whereby MPYC joined a choral competition as a group (other than the Sing Singapore competition in 2002 as "Dvox" and getting 1st runner-up in the Groups Category). This event was participated by choirs from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and China. It was separated into to segments: Performance and Competition. 20 choirs from the above mentioned regions joined the Competition, which was held on 18th and 19th Aug 2006. MPYC's timeslot is on 19th Aug, 3pm. We are the fourth group to compete.

In preparation for this debut competition, we put in all our effort into this, going for extra practices, doing our homework and really, really memorising the competition pieces, fine-tuning them, while also preparing for our annual concert, Aurythmics VI, to be held on 9th Sept at The Arts House.

The big day came. We met up at 11.30am at Ocean Butterflies Music School (Shize's workplace) and got into Dance Studio B to rehearse, make up, prepare our hearts, mind and body for the competition. We did some physical exercises, warm-ups and started practising and further fine-tuning the songs as much as possible. After that we went for lunch and proceeded to change and prepare for our big show.

At 3pm, we proceeded to Singapore Conference Hall (SCH), where the event is being held. We went into a waiting room where we saw lots of other choirs waiting for their turn. As this might make us nervous, we decided to go out for some fresh air and to calm our emotions down.

Soon, it was our turn. We were much more relaxed by then and proceeded to backstage to prepare to go in and perform our best. Before that, we had our traditional pre-performance encourgement of putting our hands together and going "MPYC, Jia you! Woosh!". We went in and sang our competition pieces and went out feeling happy that we'll done our best. then we had again our traditional post-performance encouragement of putting our hands together and going "We did it! Great job MPYC! Woosh!" This indeed has made us more confident about ourselves and our singing. After that we went to watch other choirs before us perform and went for dinner at a Korean restaurant. There, we decided to got back to SCH to watch and await the results after the meal.

We went back and watched the final round of competition before the finals. The results came at about 10.45pm. I am very proud to say that MPYC got our very first GOLD MEDAL! MPC (Metro Philharmonic Chrous) also got Gold Medal! The difference was that we did not get into the finals but they got in. We encouraged them and cheered them on for the finals on 20th Aug.

As the award presentation is on 20th Aug, Shuhui, our Chairwoman, will be there to accept the medal on our behalf. Congrats to MPYC and MPC!!! 2 award-winning choirs under the same umbrella! Jia You!