Olivia Ong @ The Esplanade

Olivia who?

That's some of the responses I got lol. First got to know about her when her "A Girl Meets Bossa Nova" album was released in Japan. I was rather surprised that a Singaporean could actually cut an album in the crazily competitive Japanese market, much less become relatively popular over there.

More about her: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Ong

Anyway, me and a group of YL peeps went to catch her (FREE!) at the Esplanade for the Mosaic Music Festival. We reached there around 8.30pm, and managed to catch the previous performer, Kathleen Harris, doing a couple of jazzy songs on the piano. Had to squeeze into the crowd (the whole foyer of the Esplanade was practically filled), of which most were there to catch Olivia. Quite obvious really, the moment 9pm arrived there wasn't any more space left to walk.

She started off with a cover of "All out of Love" by Air Supply...


and ended off with an encore piece, the overplayed "Fly Me to The Moon" (though she did it really well)

Check out the bass solo! Throughout the whole performance I found it hard to stop tapping along to the bass lines ^^

-credits to dusty for the vids

In between she sang some of her original songs, and other covers which I couldn't recognise. Her vocals were pretty clear though not fantastic, but her music was really unique and fresh! Her band (the Olivia Ong Quintet - nice band name =.=) deserves credit for that, especially the bassist, who was using an electric cello! Most of her songs were "funked up" and given a jazzy twist, yet still retaining that little bit of pop which definitely made them much easier to appreciate. I liked "Make it together", one of her original songs which was a originally a dance track but she twisted it to fit the whole jazzy theme.

After the encore (which her fans repeatedly shouted for), she was mobbed by people wanting to take photos with her. Looks like she has a pretty large fan-base here! And she's only 22, with at least 3 albums to her name already. That's quite impressive. I'm seriously considering buying her 2 "A Girl Meets Bossa Nova" albums already =)