Dear Friends,

A very warm welcome to Voices – A Festival of Song happening from 7 – 10 Dec 2023. Every year, the team, together with a wonderful line-up of talented singers, prepares for this annual music festival that covers a range of styles and genres, filling the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay with song.

After 10 years of developing this festival, we seek to refine and redefine what it means to honour and celebrate the human voice, stepping back to the basics to ask why we love to sing and why we continue to sing.

Perhaps it was a performance that inspired us, or a gathering with other singers of similar music interests, or even a shared experience of making music through the power of song. So this year, we look back at the repertoire and styles that evoked such inspiration, exploring music synonymous with the singing foundations that are by no means any less rich or any less excellent in their own regard.

Some highlights to look out for are Die Singphoniker from Germany, who will show us the beauty of classical part-song singing, and London Community Gospel Choir from the UK who will deliver a charismatic gospel performance. From Singapore, we have Chroma who will exemplify how sacred polyphonic music of the Renaissance era has built strong groundings for ensemble singing, and Joyce Lee Tung and Cindy Honanta who will charm us with a gorgeous collection of Viennese opera arias from the Classical period, a must-sing for all young classical singers out there!

During the pandemic, we produced an educational series of singing-related introductory videos—Vocal Focal—inculcating the spirit of learning by means of the digital realms and presented it on Esplanade Offstage as part of Voices 2021. This year, Vocal Focal goes live at the Esplanade Mall in Emmanuel & Sons, where we will learn about Jazz, Cabaret and Art Song with three different groups of Singapore voice practitioners. Workshops for the public led by Die Singphoniker and London Community Gospel Choir will take place in the Esplanade Recital Studio, and these are open to singers of all ages.

At the same time, we have also developed a whole generation of young singers through our mentorship programmes in the past 10 years, and we have wasted no time in welcoming them to the Voices family. One of the anchor mentorship programmes is the return of the Voices Festival Choir. Made up of choristers from the ages of 17 – 26, they will spend a week together preparing for their own performance, premiering a new work at a choral showcase at the Esplanade Concourse during Voices 2023. They will also get the chance to participate in workshops led by our guests Die Singphoniker and London Community Gospel Choir, as well as joining them on stage in performance.

Across various stages, we also have students from Institute of Technical Education, LASALLE College of the Arts, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University, Singapore Polytechnic and Republic Polytechnic showing us what Show Choir, Musical Theatre and Pop A Cappella mean to them. As regular performers at National Day Parades, The Island Voices will lead a singalong session at the DBS Foundation Outdoor Theatre at Esplanade and our ever-popular Karaoke box returns at a new location right next to Makansutra Gluttons Bay along the Esplanade Waterfront. If you want to discover music creation and original compositions, we have just the thing for you too, with a brilliant line-up of artists of the electropop, indie pop, Mandopop and folk genres at the Esplanade Courtyard Green.

There will be plenty of singing taking place at Esplanade over the four-day festival, and as long as you love to sing, we would love to see you at Voices!

Christel Hon
Assistant Head, Music
The Esplanade Co Ltd