Huayi – Chinese Festival of Arts 2012
in::music – Summer Lei + BIT Sound
Esplanade Recital Studio/Sunday

in::music – Waa Wei
Esplanade Recital Studio/Monday

Summer Lei and Waa Wei are singer- songwriters from Taiwan. But that was about the only thing that their two performances seemed to have in common.
While Lei offered a low-key introspective gig in which she happily stayed out of the spotlight at times, Wei put on a charismatic show where she held one’s attention throughout.
Thematically, Lei’s 90-minute concert was tightly linked to the gentle drama about an unusual cafe, Taipei Exchanges (2010). For her work on the soundtrack, she won the Golden Melody Award for Best Instrumental Album Producer as well as the Golden Horse Award for Best Original Song for the title track.
On the record, she worked with a few musicians who later took on the moniker BIT Sound, named for Brick Image Team (BIT), the production company behind the film.
On Sunday, Lei, bespectacled and dressed simply in a grey top over black leggings, performed songs and instrumental tracks from the film, supported by three musicians on keyboard, guitar and double bass. From time to time, she would play the melodica.
To further draw the audience into the movie, she also had members of the sold-out audience say out loud their individual responses to the question “What’s the thing of greatest value in your heart?”. This was right out of a scene in the film in which writer-director Hsiao Ya-chuan asked the same question of ordinary Taiwanese.
Of course, Lei also performed her own solo work, including The Light Of Darkness, new song The Sounds I Don’t Want To Forget and the nostalgic My 80s, which was poignantly accompanied by images of people holding up photographs of themselves in the 1980s.
While her speaking voice is like mellow honey, she tends to sing in a breathy higher register. It is not the most polished vocal performance but there is an honesty in that raw and unvarnished set of pipes that is both brave and moving.
She is the kind of songwriter who wonders about the things that old houses have seen and then writes a song (Shining Houses) to give them a voice.
If Lei is about introspection, then Wei is about emotion.
Dressed all in black, the former lead vocalist of indie band Natural Q performs with fetching drama, a wonderful variety of expressions scrunching her face as she treats her voice like an instrument.
She can go from a babyish coo to a rock-worthy howl, traversing vulnerable tenderness and comic amusement in between. It can sometimes seem a little excessive on record but that sense of playfulness works well live.
Even better, there is an elusive quality to her voice that cannot be pinned down, lending some mystery and excitement.
Fittingly, her material runs the gamut from the tremulous ballad Naked In The Dark to the comic vaudeville piece My Father’s Pen. Above all, it was her rock side the sold-out crowd saw most often on tracks such as Roarrrr and the rousingly raucous Close Friends, complete with accompaniment from the suona, or Chinese trumpet.
Throughout her 90-minute show, she chatted happily about her upcoming solo concert in Taipei, a handwritten card she received from a fan and that she took so long to emerge for the encore because her fake eyelashes had dropped off.
She also shared that every time she sings and writes, the thought crosses her mind that if she can console others with her music, then she in turn can be consoled as well.
Like Lei, she produces music that is a direct distillation of her thoughts and personality, with hardly any regard for what is commercial or popular.
Given that her latest album, No Crying (2011), features Us, which Lei composed and wrote, it was a missed opportunity that they did not share the stage while they were here for the same festival. With their chalk and cheese performing styles, a live collaboration would have been most intriguing.
(ST)