Wednesday, November 17, 2010

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: or, FOBISSEA Music 2010 (Part 1)

This is part one of a series of posts.

FOBISSEA: Federation Of British International Schools in South-East Asia.

FOBISSEA Music is a festival in which a large number of talented musicians from British International Schools in the South-East Asian region. Over the course of around 6 days, a large group of musicians meet and rehearse music for a gala concert at the end of the festival. It’s a great opportunity for young musicians to expand their musical ability, while making new friends and just generally having a good time.

The selection of music this year was spectacular. Music including an a capella version of James Bond; string orchestra version of Coldplay’s Viva la Vida; music from the musical Wicked, the film version of Fame, Star Wars, and glee; some well-known classical pieces such as Beethoven’s 5th and Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance; and When You Believe, from Prince of Egypt.

Upon arriving in Hong Kong in the mid-afternoon, most of my friends went into Hong Kong Disneyland (we were staying at the Disneyland hotel), but I chose to stay behind and catch up on some homework — so I didn’t have too much work to do when we got back. Also, it was quite late, so they only got two hours in Disneyland: I didn’t think it was worth it.

FOBISSEA music is always really tiring — more tiring than the sport trip, surprisingly — and by the end of it, singers had throats like sandpaper, wind players had lips like jelly, and string players fingers were rubbed completely bare. The percussionists were fine though…
Despite this, playing such challenging and fun music was definitely worth the pain.


Check back in three days for the next part of the series.

4 comments:

  1. The percussionists have muscle pains from moving the instruments, but I guess it's not as much pain as the rest of the orchestra !
    muahahahahahaha >:)

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  2. To be honest, from what I've heard, strings' real problem is with their shoulders, so I don't think there's is that serious either. I just thought it made a good joke :)

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  3. do you have any videos of the songs

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  4. No, unfortunately not. Last year the disks were given out around February or so. I'm not exactly sure when it was, or if they'll do it again this year.

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