About a year ago Channel News Asia featured Goducate’s music students for the program Once Upon a Village, which was aired earlier this year. For that program, Channel News Asia brought along Singaporean violinist Min Lee and director of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music orchestra Wang Ya Hui to assess the students, and to suggest what could be done to help improve the music project. The suggestion was to send 5 of the violinists to Singapore for a short spell of intensive training to prepare them for some music exams. The idea was that there would be a follow-up program to see how the project would have improved over the year.
In November, the five violinists spent 10 days in Singapore training at the Wolfgang Music Studio, during which time Channel News Asia filmed them for the follow-up program. Since Channel News Asia’s first visit, they violinists have also been receiving regular lessons from Elaine Mallari of the Manila Symphony Orchestra.
This week, Channel News Asia was back in Laguna with Wang Ya Hui to assess the musicians’ progress. During this visit Wang Ya Hui helped them and conductor Bernard prepare for a concert to raise funds to help our students continue their studies in college or high school. There is more to conducting and playing instruments in preparation for a concert. One of the things the students learnt this time was how to walk on stage!
The follow-up program is expected to be aired in Jan or Feb 2012.
