Viva Forever: Journey to Spice Up Your Life - Elson Soh (苏奕铨) & Royal Artistes

Sunday 10 July 2011

Journey to Spice Up Your Life - Elson Soh (苏奕铨) & Royal Artistes - The Final Showcase 9 July 2011

This is my first time being to Singapore Expo and attending a concert at The Max Pavillion, Singapore. We arrived at the The Max Pavillion around 7pm. The organiser's staffs were already there to permit ticket holders to enter the concert hall which can accommodate to 6000 people. One hour before the scheduled 8pm concert as I had expected, there were very few people around the entrance.

To kill time, we strolled around at other area in Expo. Indeed, this place is as huge as an airport and definitely larger that Suntec City Convention Centre. Quite numbers of activities and exhibitions were going on here such as Robinsons Sales, wedding dress exhibition and a live singing band at the centre of food and beverage area.

At 7.45pm, we went back to The Max Pavillion. The scene of crowd at the entrance did stir up our excitement. I expected 3000 people would be there that night for Elson Soh's debut concert. At 8pm, the show hasn't started yet and the front seat zone was not even half full with audiences. I was perplexed why people turned up so late as it was publicly announced that the front seat zone tickets are already sold out. By 8.30pm, there were about 2000 people seated with some rows of vacant seat. The concert started soon after with powerful cheering from the audiences. William Soh, who is Elson's manager, hosted the concert.

Elson didn't show up until the rest of Royal Artistes had showcased their performances which were just fine, not great yet not bad. Elson kicked off his debut concert with a lively song "I'm In Love With It" which I like it very much. It was the same song I heard when I first saw him in public appearance at Chinatown on New Year 2011. Next, Elson sang his promotional song for Go Green Campaign, Eco Music Challenge 2010. He belted out the rest of his original ballad songs; Every Minute (每分鐘),Our Promise(说好一定要幸福),Say You Love Me (说一次你爱我),If Only You Knew, and You'll Never Be Mine.

As Elson fans shouted out "Elson, I love you" every now and then, he surprisingly hit out his song quote "说一次你爱我(Say You Love Me)". It definitely drove his fan crazy echoing again their shouts. It was amazing to see him perform "If Only You Knew", "You'll Never Be Mine" and LeeHom's "All The Things You Never Knew (你不知道的事)" while playing the baby piano. Exclusively for his Malay fans, Elson even wrote and performed his first Malay song "Cinta Pada Mu (Loving You)" in collaboration with Love Hunters. Guest artistes, Lorraine Tan and J.Ai were also invited to perform on the stage.

#1 Elson Soh performs "You'll Never Be Mine" (Courtesy of Elson Soh)

Elson Soh performs Lee Hom's All Things You Never Knew

#2 Elson Soh performs LeeHom's "All The Things You Never Knew (你不知道的事)"

(Courtesy of Elson Soh)

Elson's vocal range is indeed incredible throughout his showcase. I personally prefer his lower range of vocal notes which has similarity to Ah Du (阿杜)'s. As Elson prepared for his final song, Malaysian Penangite singer cum composer, Bryan Teoh (张永佳) performed "Absence (缺席)" live with the baby piano. His vocal performance is as good as Elson's. Elson ended his two-and-a-half-hour debut concert with super-high "Spice Up Your Life". As the concert started late at 8.30pm, it ended around 11pm. By then, quarter of the audiences had already left.

#3 Elson Soh with his juniors/guest singers. From left to right: Joseph Hui, Yumi Beh, Joanne Chan, Peter Ng, Elson Soh, Bryan Teoh, Lorraine Tan, Marco Fajar Hartanto, X-Clusive (Courtesy of Nellie Villegas Butalid)

Luckily we boarded the last train at Expo MRT to the city just in the nick of time. Feel so glad to be part of the memories where the youngest ever local artist performed a full fledge concert in Singapore. がんばれ。