The Marcel Heijnen Band: Bringing culture to our hood!

As I am writing this the passing of Lee Kuan Yew is all over the news. May I use this post to express my condolences to those who feel close to him. There is no doubt in my mind the man was a great leader and a lot of Singapore's accomplishments as a nation can be attributed to his great leadership.  The development of Singapore, into a thriving nation with yes a high standard but for that a high quality of living is unprecedented and I don't see this success story repeated in the near future!

Big changes though are not always the result of a single driver. Big changes also come about by the coming together of many relatively small initiatives from people with the right ideas and enthusiasm. 

In art, I think Artistry is such an initiative that has the potential to nudge the appreciation of contemporary art a bit forward! Smartly targeting the Singapore audience at their main "weakness", food and beverages, the founders of Artistry are exposing the usually young visitors to visual art, like sculpture, painting and photography, as well as poetry and music. 

With that it provides a cultural platform to those who are attempting to become "up and coming" to share their work, by organizing e.g. singer song writer performances and numerous gallery exhibits!

So if one of the founders of Artistry asks you to come to his gig to take photos of the show, you feel automatically flattered and cannot say no. Not that I would have otherwise. I've reached a stage where I could do with some new faces on my blog so the Marcel Heijnen Band was a good opportunity anyway!

 

They were playing rather early at the Hood bar at Bugis+. Artistry may have been a bit small for a 6 man setup. Early did not bother us though. Before the gig we had our neighbors over for drinks and nibbles and we nibbled enough to feel we could skip dinner.

 
In a previous conversation someone had put a little question mark around gigs at Hood. The stage is right in front of a giant screen where even during the gigs a football game is shown. I was a bit wary of that because to me background is important.

But as said this gig was early, too early for football, so instead Marcel had one of his own photographic artworks on display on the big screen. 

It was a lot more appealing than let's say the face of Cristiano Ronaldo!

The band members for the night were:

Marcel Heijnen (Vocals, Acoustic Guitar and Original Songs),

Bani Rahman (Bass), 

Thorsten Vieth (Keyboards),

 Govin Tan (Drums and Tabla), 

Featuring Andy Chia (Flute).



Where the bands gentle rock originals were stirring up the fire, and Randolf regularly fueled it up with steely riffs

it was Andy who at times applied the bellow and made the fire blaze up Hood's chimney!

An early start also left us with time for more, and lo and behold after a quick visit to Sing Jazz we ended up at Artistry to listen to some local Reggae beats of  Wobology. Since I still had some shots left I snapped a few there as well! At the end, I added some of these and a couple of the pre program (Shades of Grey). I am sure Marcel does not mind!