Front Row

In the middle of the 19th century, under the first President of the French Republic, Napoleon III, major public works were undertaken in Paris. The city transformed under urbanist, Baron Haussmann, who destroyed much of the medieval city. From the baron’s name, the term Haussmannization, which is defined as “the creative destruction of something for the betterment of society.” Ar...

Our guest, from Singapore’s Sam Kiang Huay Kwan Chinese Opera Group, an arts society, dispels some misconceptions of Chinese operas and shares what will be presented in a performance lecture to unfold the magic of Yue and Huangmei operas practiced by that arts society. Hemakes a case for these operas as vehicles to help inculcate good morals in society. See omnystudio.com/listener for privac...

As a first outing, staging a play, the production house undertakes a devised work centred in a published collection of 111 letters by a Taiwan author to his deceased partner. Our guests tell about the process of devising and the challenges of taking declarations of love and loss and creating out of them a performance with the clarity of a beginning, middle and an end. They also share insights into...

Ensemble Virama is a chamber ensemble which appeared on the scene a couple of years ago, and has indeed been performing very very lovely music. In a short time it has staged several performances, always augmented with talks about the music being performed. This time around, quintets. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From poetry to song, from jock to musician. From winning a singer-songwriter competition to singing in World Expo (Shanghai 2010) to travelling on the road all by himself and trying to break into the music scene. Then the break comes when at the nadir he takes one more shot at his dream. Hear Ariff, who opened for Yuna, share his story and hear his singing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

In discussing what a performer does on the stage, our guest leaps into the various schools of  theatre-training and approaches to the craft of acting, from Stanislavski's system to Meyerhold biomechanics to clowning; from the classical to the contemporary. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A colourful and celebratory exhibition of 16 works completed over five years of  the performers of Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam, the young actors, who were once disenfranchised children. The Kattaikkkuttu is a traditional folks theatre of Tamilnadu but the performing arts school is unique in its mission and purpose. The artist-photographer talks about the process and his reasons for capturing these...

Writhing, a solo show by Bree Jonson, examines the inner fragility yet exterior harshness of creatures found on the seabed. Bree joins us to tell us more about her paintings and sculptures inspired by the underwater world.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The guest discusses how he marries art--watercolours--with conservation. He tells about the works, paintings of pre-independence buildings found along four early streets of Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Melaka and Singapore. His uses these images to draw attention to the urgent need for a more humane urban planning policy and the need for heritage conservation. The absence of which only darkens our herita...

Our guests tell about the very first Malaysia Percussion Festival Competition (MPFC), and its aim to provide a creative environment for people from all walks of life and ages, with various skill levels and cultural background to explore, innovate, educate and build communities. The festival also seeks to create a culture that promotes overall wellness in terms of thinking skills, communication ski...

The Tanjai Kamalaa Indira Dance School, established in 1966 is the longest operating dance training school in Malaysia. Over the years they have had thousands of students and put on numerous performances. Their latest production is called Sri Valli Thirumanam, and the Founder and Principal of TKI Dance School, (Nattuva Thilagam) Mrs Indira Manikam and lead Actor/Dancer Kamini Manikam join us to te...

A conversation on what to look out for to enter into the world of a particular piece of contemporary dance. Suhaili discusses themes and styles and points out to the need beyond the merely ‘I like it or I don’t’ by looking for patterns. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sacred music gets some attention with the upcoming festival which will run from June through to August. The conductor and artistic director of choirs which specialize in singing sacred music, tells about Beethoven and his small but very significant contribution to this particular genre, and hints of the composer’s own spiritual journey. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus is sending this production “Don Quixote, A Man of La Mancha” a musical to Ningbo, China to participate in the Tri Campus Arts Festival after performances in Seremban and Kuala Lumpur. Our guests share with us the birth of this production and why the university has chosen this work to feature and orchestrating the production with both Western...

The curator, a graduate in architecture, curates an exhibition which looks at both the quantifiable and the unquantifiable in aesthetics and creativity. He tells about the Fibonacci sequence, golden ratios and Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and then leads into the works of local artists who sculptures beg our engagement See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speak Easy is a monthly spoken word poetry show featuring local talents every first Tuesday of the month. The pilot episode introduces three published poets who are also spoken word performers. This month’s writing prompt is: There is a very strong relationship between Malaysians and food. Tell us how would you eat poetry. -- 4:38 - Melizarani T Selva - Indiantity 12:24 - Alana Azlan - I&rsq...

In the third in the series on music, our guest shares on the contributions of Baroque music and the emergence of the sonata, the suite and the concerto. Now names of musicians familiar to contemporary ears come to the fore, with Bach, Vivaldi, Handel and Telemann. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Catching the resident conductor just as he is about to step into a rehearsal and listening to him explain his approach to preparing to conduct whether it is classical music or popular music as in a musical. He responds to the question, “What is the difference between an opera and a musical?” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sarah-Louise returns to BFM. When she was last here, in May 2014, she tells the Julie Andrews (of ‘Sound of Music’) story. This time around , she and her co-star are here to tell about a comedy--the troubled life of a singer--tortured by jealousy and unrequited love. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The actors tell us about the need for musical theatre training and getting jobs, shedding light on how well trained actors and performers are in England and the United States where both have spent time. They also tell about Dama Asia’s upcoming production where they play father (Chako) and daughter (Michelle), and some of the challenges they have to overcome. See omnystudio.com/listener for...

Just fresh out of music school, the two young musicians share their musical journey and paint the road ahead. They also talk about the composers they will be performing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This exhibition, which features nine works by the artist, doubles as a farewell to the past and a forward look to art which is more a project with more contingencies, collaborations and variables to which the artist must surrender.  Even in this exhibition, the artist permits nature to participate in his creations--like leaving honey on canvas out in the sun to dry and permitting life to inte...

Rather than take a western intellectual history approach to visual art and its language, Dr Simon Soon looks at specifics and through that, give us another way to understand the visual language used by artists and art critics. Here he explores what happens when the discipline of art takes inspiration from cultural anthropology and to engender a new artistic language and a new movement.  &nbsp...

Through the series of watercolours which marked three different periods, 2013 post-Morocco, 2016 and 2017, Rafiee Ghani explains how these are manifestations of his thinking and experiential processes. The artist tells not only about his travels which inform his works, but about his emotional responses to the people of the place, often purposely ignoring the kind of news which the media deploys to...

The guests, folks from a performing troupe and a production house, discuss the local theatre scene with respect to shows specifically for children.  They share on the evolution of Plastic City, a shadow play which started off in the lobby of a boutique Penang guesthouse, traveled to Taiwan and Macau and now in our city. The show incorporates theatrical entertainment with education on the envi...